Terry Reedy wrote: > "Paul Boddie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > The One Laptop Per Child developers and testers briefly consider Python > > development environments (in the context of things Alan Kay presented at > > EuroPython 2006): > > > > http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2006-November/003176.html > > But the only thing about Python here is "(Is somebody going > to write a Python development environment for children?)"
Yes, it's a bit tenuous, but the context and further discussion is where the interesting stuff is. At EuroPython, Alan Kay gave a keynote which focused a lot on the Etoys and Squeak body of work, which is where users (with children particularly in mind) can experiment with different ideas in an interactive graphical environment based on autonomous objects with editable behaviour. Since Squeak is an image-based environment, a lot of the "view source" functionality comes for free, whereas Python, despite its apparent similarities with Smalltalk and Lisp, doesn't appear to have quite the same level of convenient support for both live editing of objects and process persistence. The next message in the thread referenced above mentions Pygame, which is where a lot of people believe such work should be done with Python. Perhaps the Python density in that thread isn't great - it's not a bunch of core developers agonising over C API minutiae - but the significance of the project along with the issues involved is certainly worth exploring. > > E..and the best way to try the latest Python-related developments > > in the OLPC project: > > http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2006-December/007441.html > > And this has no obvious relation to its description The Sugar environment is the user interface for the OLPC project. If you look at the "human interface guidelines", you'll see the following: "To enable such layered exploration, OLPC has written much of what can be in Python, a scripting language, to enable children to view the source code." One of the more discussed topics in various places outside the Python "mainstream" recently was whether it was convenient to try out the Sugar environment without having the OLPC hardware. The referenced message attempts to provide some clarity in the matter, but once again it's the further discussion that adds extra value, I think. Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
