Adult e-toys - warning: long and a little rambling

Robert Hawley rhawley at plymouth.ac.uk
Tue Feb 6 02:01:51 UTC 2007


James

I think you speak from the heart - and I agree with you.

One of the main Squeak aims should be that we make programming easier for
the type of activity you describe.  There are HCI/design and programming
issues that deserve intellectual input. There are lots of very good Squeak
programmers (I have met some) who very into the deeper things but never look
at the Morphic ('eToys') stuff.

The Tweak/Morphic issue is one of the key things for the future of Squeak -
it is at that level that basic 'classroom work' can be done in a wonderful
hands-on way so it needs to be resolved.  Currently these things are not as
immediately usable as they could be.

I am not sure how the community functions to resolve these issues.

Yours

Bob 


On 4/2/07 16:43, "J F" <fnordlator at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
> I feel compelled to add my point of view due to recent discussions on this
> list; I have kept quiet for a long time as I'm not a professional programmer
> and haven't contributed code so my point of view doesn't hold much weight
> but I hope to be expressing a wish that other silent readers have - if not,
> I'll quietly go away and see what other solutions can do for me.
> First, some background: I was first introduced to computers as a child, on
> Apple ][ machines at my father's work, on which I learned to program in
> basic, making little games. I then progressed to a ZX81 at home and then a
> spectrum, all of which there was an easy route into programming. I then
> spent around 15 years without a computer and when I finally got a PC was
> horrified - I had a computer which (out of the box) I couldn't use to
> compute!
> I have since dirtied my hands with all sorts of programming languages and it
> took a long time before I stumbled over squeak. Squeak has been an amazing
> and enlightening adventure for me but I have never really used it. The thing
> that has kept me interested even though I don't use squeak (except to
> explore squeak itself) is Alan Kay's dynabook vision. This is how I'd like
> to use my computer (or even better, my pda.)
> Now in the next part of this mail I'm going to say all sorts of things that
> I'm sure many squeak developers will disagree with. I'm aware that squeak is
> being pulled in several directions simultaneously and everyone has their
> good reasons for doing so but I have to put my viewpoint across and deal
> with the flames. If any of this sounds blunt or naive, I'm sorry.
> There are many RAD ways of building native applications - wxPython, wxRuby,
> wxPerl... You get the idea. I'm sure wxGNUSmalltalk would be possible. For
> me, the beauty and the power of squeak is in the direct manipulation of
> objects.
> I would love to see Tweak in the main image. There is a lot of talk about
> cleaning up morphic and the huge effort it would require. Would it not be a
> better idea to spend that effort getting Tweak functional in the main image?
> I'm sure there are many ways that the etoys environment and tile scripting
> could be expanded upon to create more advanced programming possibilities for
> the non-expert like myself.
> One way in which this type of environment could be useful to the layperson
> (and I have many more ideas which I'll save for a later date) would be the
> types of things that people generally use (and abuse) spreadsheets for.
> For example, if we had a list that we could pull from a flap and then could
> produce a tile that sums all the elements or have a 'collect' tile that
> could be used to make a little script to add 15% to the values and populate
> a new list... These morphs (or tweaks) could be embedded into a bookmorph
> (booktweak?) and easily presented in an attractive manner. One could even
> use the animation capabilities that etoys already has to create motivational
> aids - a small drawing of an athlete who will reach the finishing line at
> the other side of the screen if the numbers add up right (those numbers
> could be your weight, the money you've earned, the amount of cigarettes
> you've smoked..)
> Anyway, I'm sure a lot of you have thought about the dynabook and about
> adult etoys and fantasised about what it could do. I just worry, maybe
> unjustly so that squeak is being developed by such competent programmers
> that the needs or wants of people like me who aren't programmers or maybe
> have it as a hobby gets overlooked. I think that an adult etoys environment
> would be the killer app (environment or whatever you would call it) for
> squeak.
> Many thanks to all of you for such an amazing piece of software,
> James
> 
> 
> 




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