[squeakland] Re: Tick Rate not accurate

[Bert Freudenberg]

For this I'd explain to the kids that computers are very capable and very stupid at the same time. They do as they are told, no matter the consequences. If a kid was elevated a hundred kilometers without precautions, it wouldn't be too much fun either ...

The question is how much safety net we need to provide to protect against accidental errors. E.g. "forward by" does fence-testing (the object bounces off the world's border), "set y" does not. That's because assigning coordinates is a more advanced concept than simple movement.

For intentional testing of boundaries (which kids should be encouraged to do) it's IMHO fine to have "not nice" behavior. The lesson is "don't do that" or it hurts.

- Bert -

On 11.06.2010, at 14:20, <kharness at illinois.edu> wrote:

> Steve, 
> The project I attached is similar to projects I see from young students who experiment with huge numbers and find out they can't pause a script. It combines a large y increase by value and a large tickspersecond. I could take back control of Etoys with control-alt-delete or alt-period. I saved it with the debug info. 
> Regards, 
> Kathleen
> 
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 09:43:58 -0400
>> From: Steve Thomas <sthomas1 at gosargon.com>  
>> Subject: Re: [squeakland] Re: Tick Rate not accurate  
>> To: kharness at illinois.edu
>> Cc: Yoshiki Ohshima <yoshiki at vpri.org>, "squeakland at squeakland.org list" <squeakland at squeakland.org>
>> 
>>  Kathleen, 
>>  My vote on the EDU team is to remove 100, add a
>>  scriptable tile for "files per tick" and a
>>  scriptable tile for setting the tick rate".
>>  In your quick guide you may want to ask "What would
>>  happen if you set the Tick Rate to less than 1?"
>>  or "Try setting your Tick Rate to less than 1, what
>>  do you think will happen?"
>>  Stephen
>> 
>>  On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 8:12 AM,
>>  <kharness at illinois.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>    Yoshiki,
>>    Was "fires per tick" removed because of the way
>>    the OLPC works?
>>    BTW I wrote a new quick guide to introduce the
>>    tick rate feature.
>>    http://www.etoysillinois.org/library.php?sl=1075
>>    Regards,
>>    Kathleen
>>    ---- Original message ----
>>> Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:26:22 -0700
>>> From: Yoshiki Ohshima <yoshiki at vpri.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [squeakland] Re: Tick Rate not
>>    accurate
>>> To: "squeakland at squeakland.org list"
>>    <squeakland at squeakland.org>
>>> 
>>> At Thu, 3 Jun 2010 01:07:57 -0300,
>>> Ricardo Moran wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Why is it hidden? It seems like a very nice
>>    feature to me.
>>> 
>>>  No doubt that it is useful in some cases, but
>>    the "repeat" tile
>>> provides the same behavior to the "fires per
>>    tick" feature but in a
>>> scriptable way.
>>> 
>>>  Also, setting the tick rate is already
>>    somewhat hidden (holding the
>>> button on a clock is not discoverable).  With a
>>    hidden feature there
>>> and a special-case menu item here and many
>>    combinations of these two
>>> produce pretty much the same end result.  We
>>    thought it is confusing
>>> enough to explain them to the end user.
>>> 
>>>  Removing the "100" option from the tick rate
>>    menu and making a tile
>>> to set tick rate in the scripting category would
>>    be nice.  Trying to
>>> convince the edu team to reinstate the "fire per
>>    tick" feature might do
>>> it also^^;
>>> 
>>> -- Yoshiki
>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima
>>    <yoshiki at vpri.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>     At Wed, 2 Jun 2010 13:18:19 -0400,
>>>>     Steve Thomas wrote:
>>>>     >
>>>>     > Bert, thanks for the explanation.
>>>>     >
>>>>     > So if the default max Tick Rate is 50,
>>    should remove 100 from the list of selectable tick
>>    rates?
>>>>     >
>>>>     > "Other..." still makes sense
>>    (especially 0.1 for ticking every 10 seconds), but
>>    we should have some warning so
>>>>     folks
>>>>     > know the limitations. The warning could
>>    be when you select Other in the dialog box that
>>    pops up. ex: "Max Rate is
>>>>     50 per
>>>>     > second, can change in preferences").
>>>>     >
>>>>     > My major purpose for using Etoys is
>>    playing around ;) no specific need at this point
>>    in time. I noticed the
>>>>     problem when
>>>>     > running Randy's Dice Roll project and
>>    was simply trying to figure out how things worked.
>>>> 
>>>>      Just FYI, there is a hidden feature
>>    called "fires per tick" (only
>>>>     present in the scriptor menu when
>>    etoyFriendly preference is off) to
>>>>     specify how many times the script should
>>    be executed per tick. For
>>>>     example, if you set the number high in
>>    Randy's Dice Roll, the bar
>>>>     graph grows more rapidly.
>>>> 
>>>>     -- Yoshiki
>>>>    
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>>>> 
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