Access vs. Media

John.Maloney at disney.com John.Maloney at disney.com
Wed Oct 31 18:47:00 UTC 2001


Dean,

Hee, hee!

I got a chuckle out of your reply. And I agree--up to a point. Those who
*really* want to program computers (like you) don't need a display at all.
They'll use paper tape, punched cards, or even the front-panel switches. But
such people are highly motivated and very exceptional. They are able to see
their program in their head, or willing to use supplemental tools such
as print outs and handwritten notes to work with their code.

I think programming gets much easier when you can get a lot of context
in front of the programmer. The Smalltalk browser does this, and the EToy
system does it even more. These tools help because we're so much better
at recognition than recall. So if Mark's goal is to teach *kids* how to program,
then I think a 320x240 screen is too small. Like you, I've programmed
with small video screens (40x24 characters), but I would not want to
inflict that on students these days. You might find that 5% of the students
really take to it, but you'd alienate the other 95%.

Re:
>    So, as Andreas mentioned, a lot of
>people once "knew" that you can't write
>an operating system in C.  It seems that
>a lot of people now "know" that a 320 x
>240 screen is too small for programming.

You may be right, and I'd love to be proved wrong. In fact, I'd love
an opportunity to prove myself wrong! There's a part of me that thinks
you could get pretty far on a small screen with the right UI. But the
current Squeak programming tools are MUCH too wasteful of pixels,
and Squeak's facilities for window management are awkward on small,
pen-based screens.

Re:
>    We really should be able to craft a
>version of Squeak that would be a usable
>development and runtime environment on a
>machine with the power of a 33 MHz 68K
>and a small display.  I avoid saying a
>"Palm" because: 1) There are many low
>cost handhelds in this category.  2) The
>Palm OS has some limitations that could
>impede performance.

That's one of those projects I'd love to pursue some day. PocketSmalltalk
does an excellent job for application deployment, but does not attempt to
provide a development environment on the handheld.

	-- John

P.S. I couldn't quite believe that your entire message would fit
on a 240x320 screen without scrolling, but I counted the lines and,
sure enough, it would! With room to spare.






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