Arthur wrote: > My point was only that Paul is saying that Smalltalk was developed > specifically for children. It is never fully clear to me in conversing > with Paul whether he means for children to *write* or for children to > reap the benefits of what can be accomplished by adults that can.
If I have been unclear on this issue it was unintentional. Smalltalk, according to its creators, was always first about kids being able to write their own programs. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=155364&dl=ACM&coll=portal However, another issue is kids being able to understand and extend the work of others, and that brings one further into the second category you mention; they are not completely disjoint. In fact, most work done in a Smalltalk image is generally adapting other people's work to your current needs. Very rarely is stuff written completely from scratch. Libraries and classes arr reused; one often starts from working running application, say, a paint program) and makes incremental changes until it is more what you like, say, a program to design maps. Also, Kay, as in his 1972 paper of the title, seems to sometimes use phrases like: "A personal computer for children of all ages". So, you see he is playing fast and loose with what it means to be a "child", perhaps often meaning not age but a state of mind, as in "child-like" or "playful". However, you would be right to call Alan Kay on what "for children" means, as you have in the past. Even he has said in public lectures (jokingly) that the way to get money to support work on new programming systems that are easier to use is to pitch them as if they were for children (since everyone wants to make things easier or more possible for kids), whereas if you pitch work to make programming easier for adults, at least historically he says the response is something like (not his exact words), well those engineers should just suffer and use what we have right now, what do we pay them for anyway? :-) I think he did find an interesting and effective sales pitch to continue his work, which I think is broader than just for people of, say, the five to fifteen year old range. I think he genuinely does want better to use systems, if for no other reason than so he can use them himself for example. But I see nothing wrong in that -- much software gets developed because someone wants to develop it to scratch a personal itch. However, Alan Kay, having said *something* like that is still somewhat wrong about that. There are, at least now, two reasons better programming languages get built.One is that people just build them for personal or academic reasons. The other is that people make arguments based on programmer productivity (e.g. Jython developers are, say, 4X more productive than Java programmers :-). You are also right to question Constructivism as an ideology, methodology, or so forth, on the general grounds it is good to be skeptical of anything people pitch for kids for any reason; still, that is where we part ways obviously, since I do see the value in a constructivist approach towards education, meaning, present kids with tools and objects they can use to build things with and hope learning occurs for many if they are ready; present them with things they can take apart to see how they work (say, working drawing program), and let them take them apart or change them if they want. And your PyGeo http://pw1.netcom.com/~ajs/ is a great example of that kind of constructivist tool Alan Kay and Seymour Papert and so on would admire as a Geometry Microworld. [Ducks. :-)] See: "The Turtle's Long Slow Trip: Macro-educological Perspectives on Microworlds." http://www.iaete.org/soapbox/microworlds.cfm (Also note that Papert believes in both "Microworlds" (much about little) and "Hyperworlds", the World Wide Web being an example of the second -- (little about much, or in his words: "large world of.. loose connections"). http://edtechlife.com/files/Wagner_Mark_KAM_II.pdf That does not mean other forms of education are invalid. Some people learn better by other channels, some people have different interests or needs, everyone benefits from reading the appropriate books or tutorials at certain times which are essentially mini lectures, and so on. Personally, for younger kids, I am leaning more and more to "media restriction" in the early years (say, five to seven and under) as a very good thing. See for example the Waldorf policy on that: http://www.openwaldorf.com/media.html http://www.waldorfhomeschoolers.com/media.htm From the second link: "We KNOW the facts and the facts are that CHILDREN HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS TO SPEND TIME IN FRONT OF A TELEVISION SET OR COMPUTER SCREEN. That's it." So the Waldorfers might lump your PyGeo and Alan Kay's Squeak into the same boat, both problematical from that point of view. :-) My position is not as extreme as theirs, of course. :-) In the end, perhaps what you may smell as "silicon snake oil", I smell as "salesmanship". Although there is also this intermediate position on the larger revolution Alan Kay helped bring about, exemplified here: :-) "A Snake, Some Oil" [A review of _Silicon Snake Oil_ by Clifford Stoll] http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/sep/mcgreal.html But the truth is that all people's promotional actions, my own included no doubt thought I try not to, are in part of at least a little hype and hot air and BS. Personally, one way my opinions differer from Alan Kay's in a deep way is on his, I think mistaken, notion that an object (or a class) can have any meaning apart from the ecology of objects (or really classes) it is embedded in. I think there is a deep philosophical (and practical) point there which he is perhaps only slowly beginning to see. :-) But it is reflected in the superiority of, say, Python's modularity in practice compared to early Smalltalks, that is, if you think classes stand along, then there is no need for a higher level of "module", whereas if you think classes need to be clustered to support each other, than modules make a lot of sense. But that really is a different category of difference then the ones you outline. --Paul Fernhout _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
