some news

Alan Kay alan.kay at squeakland.org
Sat Apr 22 11:16:00 UTC 2006


Hi --

Hans expressed the real point here.

Etoys was a demo and a prototype. It is a real tribute to Squeak (and the 
team) that it was actually shippable around the world. But it is not a 
production system, and it is not scalable to the hundred dollar laptop as 
it stands. It needs to be reimplemented, and many parts have to be 
improved. We have been doing some of this (and the results are interesting) 
but we have to take every avenue to get a scalable version that can be 
taken care of by more production like people.

A lot of today's computing (including in the Squeak community) is summed up 
by the following quote from Robert Heinlein: "The bull gets fascinated by 
the cape and fails to see the sword!"

Cheers,

Alan

---------

At 01:34 AM 4/22/2006, stéphane ducasse wrote:
>What hilaire and me said is that pushing the idea that python people
>should reimplement squeak and etoys
>is not really cool for our community, let us face it! The point was
>not to push your own language and fight for that, just to show
>the good aspects you have. So it was surprising and boring after a
>while to hear Alan systematically saying that they should redo
>everything in Python. I feel that this is counter productive and this
>is also why I say that if their goal is to teach maths to kids
>then they should focus on the contents not on the technology, so if I
>would have the same goal I would build a set of cool tools:
>Kara, BostInc, Logo, Etoys, Karel, DrScheme, Python... and encourage
>the building of contents and not to focus on
>a technology.
>
>I strongly believe that the effort we are doing to tighen up Squeak
>will help people to build new environment and new environments for
>kids too. For example the Pier logo wiki is a clear example of that.
>The work that Craig is doing can be the foundation for a really tiny
>core on top of which we could build a complete new set
>of worlds, Sophie and Tweak are also really sexy and we should find a
>way to integrate that (I'm really for helping moving
>Tweak when it is ready into Squeak if Tweakers want that).
>
>Then hearing argument that python is the way to go because they are
>mainstream was fun (because you can always use an argument only when
>it is ok to apply it to you), because C or Java are much more
>mainstream.
>
>Now there are a lot of cool material already existing in Scheme for
>example (Structure and interpretation of computer program, how to
>design program to name a few with the excellent DrScheme
>environment). Now of course you can reimplement everything in your
>own cool language because this is the only one that is important and
>mainstream.
>
>
>
>
>>Hi Stef,
>>
>>just for understanding - you and Alan want to say that
>>
>>- everyone which is interested is welcomed for giving new ideas how
>>to make education, regardless of his favoured system/language
>>- the implementation is not important - if someone want to use
>>python, to bring in his ideas he should do so
>>- reinventing or reengineering always gives the chance to think
>>once more about it - from a new point of view. Nothing is really
>>ready.
>>
>>
>>Something like this ?
>>
>>Regards
>>
>>Hans
>>
>>Am 22.04.2006 um 09:14 schrieb stéphane ducasse:
>>
>>>If you think about it the sad part is not really there.
>>>I do not believe that teaching etoy, logo, botsinc really help
>>>kids learning maths as with a teacher: They have fun, they are
>>>emerged into maths, they are not afraid which is already a lot.
>>>Instead of investing in language people should invest
>>>in contents: the right exercise to teach the right concepts.
>>>Right now what you see (even if etoy) is that they are really few
>>>good material. I translated the book of Kim and some french
>>>teachers were happy and then asked the killing question: the start
>>>was fun so what where is the contents?
>>>Besides driving a car....(i pointed them to the graph basket ball
>>>thingies but this is not enough).
>>>So if Ubuntu people think that they can substitute the writing and
>>>development of a math curriculum, with
>>>a "come with me play stuff" developed in any language, this means
>>>that this is a view of programmer (bold of course and full of
>>>enthousiasm) and I wish them success, because I think that the
>>>contents in any format is more important.
>>>
>>>May living and being surrounded by teachers biaised my view of the
>>>world...
>>
>>
>
>





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