[Squeakland] the non universals

[Alan Kay]

And they are concrete in the way they are precisely because children 
of this age don't generalize the way older children and adults do, 
but by "carrying a bushel basket of 'similar things that work 
similarly' ". They are not patterns from the outside but are more 
like analogies that the child gathers together from doing many kinds 
of thing with a powerful idea like "increase by". Later the bushel 
basket starts to become an idea of its own,  first as a heuristic to 
try when thinking in problem solving, and finally by enlarging itself 
into a kind of thing on its own. This is interestingly like 
Vygotsky's theory of concept formation in much younger children, but 
the resemblences could be accidental.

Cheers,

Alan

At 10:02 PM 8/23/2007, Blake wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:04:18 -0700, Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Mark Guzdial's blog is a great discussion point (in general I think
> > Mark's blog is really good but he has slipped up here). Alan has left a
> > comprehensive response there, which does refute part of what Mark is
> > saying
>
>His basic point is right, even if two of his examples are wrong. The
>problem I've had with design patterns is that they're not all that
>meaningful until you've had to build them, and once you've built them,
>they seem fairly obvious. I've found them more useful for communication
>than anything.
>
>In contrast to his point about Etoys, the problem I've had with them is
>that they're too concrete.<s>
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