This guide is intended for VA Smalltalk programmers, new or experienced, who want to develop and package VAST applications for distribution. Whatever your level of experience with Smalltalk, by following steps provided in this guide, you can create, manage, and package applications, administer your system, and perform many other tasks in the development environment.

This guide assumes that you understand the terms class, subclass, method, instance, instance variable, temporary variable, global variable, and pool dictionary. If you are unclear about the meaning of the terms, please refer to the glossary or to other books on Smalltalk.

Whether you are experienced or new to Smalltalk, it would be worthwhile to read Introducing the Smalltalk development environment. The chapter is not long, and it provides information that you need to know to use the product effectively.