While in the abstract, Yoshiki has a great idea, I see three problems: (1) Especially for young children who are just beginning to read and write, imposing Python and its syntax on them is to high of a hurdle for accessing a calculator; (2) While I love Pippy, it has a long ways to go towards being friendly to the uninitiated: there is no debugger, for example; This is fine for the purposes for which it was designed, but to use it for a general purpose tool is a real stretch; (3) Reinier has added a very approachable feature set to the latest versions of the Calculator Activity: it lets you define variables and hence contruct word problems. It isn't a full-blown programmng environment, but it is one of many stepping stones for younger children.
I would almost go so far as to agree with Yoshiki that for the more advanced calculator features: trig fucntions, etc., we do make the leap into Pippy or Etoys, but there is something simple and approachable to Reinier's work. -walter _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
