[squeakland] [IAEP] Why is Scratch more popular than Etoys?

[Hilaire Fernandes]

Perhaps programming is not for the mass, and it is not the target of Etoys,
right?
The unique value of Etoys is how you can connect different artefacts
developed in different contexts, thanks to the tiles. Supplementary
artefacts can be written in Smalltalk rock star, but this feature does not
scale right now, the problem is not Smalltalk but more the lacking
infrastructure around (internal and external to Etoys).

I am pretty sure at 100% that if Etoys came with huge libraries of such
artefact, specialised for various domains, ready to use by educators, Etoys
will have a tremendous impact both in the teaching communities and the
educative content producers.

As long as Etoys does not take a more focused direction targeted to the
professionals of the sector (the educators), it will remain where it is.

Hilaire



2011/9/15 karl ramberg <karlramberg at gmail.com>

> I looked at this TED presentation today:
>
> http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.html
>
> He say there are a trillion hours of participatory value up for grabs.
>
> We could do with some more people working on Etoys :-)
>
> I also looked at these two web forum pages discussing programming for
> kids pages today but not much love for Etoys:
>
> http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/169225.html
>
> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/kgbzq/why_we_should_teach_our_kids_to_code/
>
> There seems to be a mismatch from we perceive as values and strong
> features of Etoys and what other people see.  Why do we not get the
> ideas out? What makes is so hard ? Do people test Etoys and drop it ?
>
>
>
>
> Karl
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 10:44 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr.
> <jecel at merlintec.com> wrote:
> > Alan Kay wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> Then we handed Etoys over to the Squeak Foundation, and the version
> >> they put out online retains the classroom UI with flaps.
> >
> > Actually, that would be the Squeakland Foundation. But in the Squeak
> > Board at least Bert and I try to represent the interests of the Etoys
> > (and Scratch) users.
> >
> > One reason for Scratch's popularity is the restrictions they have made
> > which upset some people in the OLPC community. Etoys, on the other hand,
> > suffered from some of the problems that open source projects have -
> > students and teacher become very upset when some project they have
> > created won't load into a newer version of the system. Note that I am
> > fully on the side of Etoys here, but we have to be aware of the costs.
> >
> > It is interesting to me that Scratch's explict loops (compared to Etoys'
> > clock driven scripts) don't seem to cause any difficulties for beginners
> > nor for young children. That shows how important it is to test stuff
> > rather than follow our intuitions.
> >
> > What I would really like (in the sense that I am trying to get funding
> > to pay a group of people to build) would be a system within
> > Croquet/Cobalt that would start out like Scratch, then become more and
> > more like Etoys as the programmer's skills improved with a smooth path
> > all the way to the Smalltalk level.
> >
> > Jens Mönig, the guy who did BYOB (Build Your Own Block extension of
> > Scratch), also created Elements, which is a Scratch syntax for
> > Smalltalk-80:
> >
> > http://www.chirp.scratchr.org/blog/?p=24
> >
> > So it is easy enough to see how far this approach can scale.
> >
> > -- Jecel
> >
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> >
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-- 
Dr. Geo, to discover geometry on Linux, Windows, MAC and XO
http://community.ofset.org/index.php/DrGeo
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