[Squeakland] Principles behind EToys

[subbukk]

On Monday 10 September 2007 7:44 pm, Alan Kay wrote:
> Have you seen:
>
> http://www.vpri.org/pdf/NSF_prop_RN-2006-002.pdf
>
> and some of the other writings about this?
> http://www.vpri.org/html/writings.htm
Yes (though not the recent ones). I am glad that you got funds to pursue it 
further. I believe we are still pretty early in the computing curve so 
audacious goals :-) do have a role to play. I do believe that smallness is a 
hallmark of elegance so the search is in the right direction.
> Etoys is a "demo that wouldn't die". We have tried many experiments
> in it besides making an environment for children. You will see in the
> docs above how some of these can be extended in a new from scratch
> system that will be much more comprehensive.
Often, temporary hacks outlive well-designed stuff :-). I suppose for those 
who have been involved in EToys from the beginning, the difference between 
principles and hacks :-) would seem very obvious. From Self to Morphic to 
Etoys some nice ideas seem to have slipped between the cracks. Glad to hear 
that such ideas are still in the works.
> The tradeoffs between a universal object with total polymorphism and
> complete extensions are interesting (especially given that most
> computer people are very bad at designing extensions). We are still
> thinking about what the first level of this will be like.
Extensions are indeed a hard part. Good to hear that your team is engaged on 
it.

I will catch up with the new papers and see if they bridge my understanding,
Thanks .. Subbu