[etoys-dev] Compressing sources

[Rita Freudenberg]

Am 15.01.2010 um 20:22 schrieb Hilaire Fernandes:

> Rita Freudenberg a écrit :
>
>>> Remember this is a learning machine, and most of the kids won't  
>>> have access to a different machine for a long time. Reading the  
>>> source code in its original form, with comments and formatting  
>>> preserved is much better than looking at decompiled code. We don't  
>>> want to give them a "magic black box" but something they can  
>>> disassemble and learn from.
>> I strongly second that. With Etoys on the XO, I expect more  
>> children/teachers are going further and deeper into Etoys and  
>> Squeak. It is one of my goals for Squeakland to make this easier.  
>> There already is the option to show the source code of a script.  
>> And then you need to find exactly that sourcecode in your system.
>
> Sure I know this argument, I even use it or experienced it many  
> years ago with Free Software, but if the target is the kid, this is  
> purely anedoctical. In that case, kids *may* have a better chance to  
> learn something about programming with the Python environment or  
> something in the line of BotsInc. But even in these conditions your  
> are only targeting a very tiny fraction of the kids.

Yes, that's true, this will not address the majority of XO users  
(kids) yet. But it will be useful for older students and for  
developers, who are using the XO for development. I think when we  
remove these files yet, it will be much harder to put them in again  
later. And I'm thinking in longer terms, years from now, when these  
kids might want to extend their etoys projects using Squeak.
I know, this *can* happen, I'm not sure it actually *will* happen. But  
I will leave the door open. Bert did already compress the file-size :)

Rita
>
> Hilaire
>

Rita Freudenberg
rita at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de