Albert Cahalan wrote:
Actually no. Teachers are comfortable with homonyms, at least if
they are already in common use and there is little chance of conflict.
The problem with "activity" is that you're introducing a completely
new meaning for a word that is already used for something else in
the same contexts.
In what way is "activity" any more confusing than any other homonym
teachers have to deal with when talking about computers, like "desktop"?
If a teacher asks "What activity do you want to do?", they sure
don't specifically mean a computer program. An activity is
something you do with playground equipment, with the cafeteria, etc.
Is the Brazilian word for "activity" even more specific than the English
word "activity", only used for physical activities in the real world but
never computers? My understanding of the English word doesn't
necessarily exclude activities on the computer or have any physical
connotations. But then again, I went to public schools.
Can you think of a better word than "activity", that has no
other meanings, yet will be universally understood?
The requirement is not "no other meanings". The requirement is
"no other meanings in the same context". (though "app" does
indeed have no other meanings and is universally understood)
I don't think "no other meaning in the same context" is a requirement
either. It would be nice, but all progress would stop if ambiguity were
prohibited (or we'd all have to use
longunambiguouscompoundwordslikethegermanlanguagedoes. I don't
understand why "activity" is so confusing, unless there's a fundamental
difference between the meaning of the word "activity" in English and
Portuguese. Is that your point, or do you think "activity" is just as
confusing in English?
The standard words in English are "app" and "program". Pick one.
Either will be far less confusing than "activity".
I think the whole point of using the word "activity" instead of
"application" or "program" was to purposefully AVOID the unfortunate
connotations of the well understood words for desktop applications and
programs. One of the goals of Sugar is for monolithic "applications" to
be broken down into reusable components, and integrated into task
oriented "activities" (like eToys or HyperCard stacks), instead of
requiring the user to switch between monolithic single-purpose
applications, like editing an image in Photoshop, formatting text in
Word, and composing images and text them into a web page in Front Page.
Of course there is a text editor "activity" and a book reader
"activity", but ideally those are reusable Python components that can be
integrated together into other activities (eventually by the casual
user, like eToys and HyperCard), instead of locking them up into
separate "applications".
Activities are task oriented, instead of being tool or
application or document or window or desktop oriented.
I like the word "activity" better than "task", because
it sounds like an "activity" could be more entertaining
and amusing than a "task" which sounds more like hard work
or an unpleasant ordeal (like a "sysiphean task").
None of those is suitable. It's "app" or "program" in English.
To my mind, "applications" are commercial products designed to be sold
in cardboard boxes, to take up shelf space and attract the consumer's
eye with flashy colors, to become obsolete and require upgrading every
time a new version comes out, to slow down the boot process by several
seconds by calling home and checking to see if the new version has come
out yet, to run a background task that polls for a new version every
five minutes, to run a license manager that cuts you of if you haven't
payed your subscription, to be bloated with useless features demanded by
marketing managers, only intended to be compared against the competition
by grids of checkboxes in pandering computer magazines and sycophantic
review web sites. I do not like to use the word "application" to
describe activities for the OLPC, which demands a fresh way of thinking
about the way people use software.
-Don
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