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

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Friday 16 Sep 2011 3:06:34 AM karl ramberg wrote:
> 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 ?
Etoys requires people to think hard before putting ideas onto a project. This 
raises the barrier for students and journalists working against a deadline 
;-).

Another aspect of Etoys will become apparent if you get kids to use Etoys in a 
language foreign to them (or say in dingbat fonts). Though the UI is graphical 
it still has a heavy text bias. I noticed this when helping children, 
illiterate in English, use Etoys. Painting lacks the directness of other 
Morphic ops like move, pickup etc. Beginners tend to the leave the Paint Tool 
on while saving their project. We could do more in simplifying the UI. For 
instance, compose sketches by long-pressing (embed) one Morph on another. 
Suzanne Guyader, author of Art and Etoys, had many nice ideas for easing 
compositions.

What Alan proposed about going beyond Scratch and Etoys in an earlier mail 
rings true from my own experience. I would throw in Tuxpaint into the mix. 
Tuxpaint uses sounds very well. We need something that takes the best parts of 
Etoys, Scratch and Tuxpaint and build a new Idea editor.

But then, we need to be able to look beyond software at the larger goal. The 
real question we should be asking is "Why aren't children acquiring fluency in 
learning with Etoys/Scratch/TuxPaint or whatchamacallit?"

Regards .. Subbu