Another sugar rant (was: x2o physics problem solving game)

[Neil Graham]

On Wednesday 06 August 2008 7:08:33 am Alex Levenson wrote:
> I'm announcing x2o's first tentative release! x2o is a physics problem
> solving game in which you create Rube Goldberg contraptions in order to get
> the O to land on top of the X. Check it out at
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/X2o, give it a try, write some levels, and let me
> know how it goes. There are a lot of planned improvements on the way, but I
> would love some feedback.

I have been playing a lot of http://fantasticcontraption.com/ lately so this 
is something I'm quite keen on.

Some things...    [rant prep.]

Searching for X2o using the wiki search doesn't find it.  It's Called X2o! 
it's url is http://wiki.laptop.org/go/X2o for heaven's sake!  Somebody either 
fix the search or just change the search box to go to google.

With regards to using activities on the XO I've tried to be accepting of the 
sugar interface style, but this activity crystallizes things for me.  I'm now 
prepared to move to the sugar-sucks camp.  I've used many and written a few 
physics toy programs. I've had a fair experience with a variety of ways to do 
this kind of thing.  X2o is the most cubersome that I have encountered.  

I'd like to be clear that I don't think there is anything done poorly in the 
X2o activity itself.  I think it all comes from having the sugar interface.  
The more I encounter sugar interfaced programs, the more I think Activities 
would be better off with just about anything else.

I gave myself a long time to acclimatise, much longer than I would have for 
anything else, because the XO is really quite important.  I really believe in 
the goals of the OLPC project, but I cant use the XO effectively! My daughter 
can't use the XO effectively! 

At what point does a do-over make more sense?  I was prepared to take the 
resource usage and the slow bits and the joke that is the journal because 
they were all things that future work would have addressed.   The cumbersome 
user interface is a killer though because it's designed to be like that.

When I got my XO it was as an XO, not as a cheapie laptop.  I wanted to 
support the platform.  A big part of that for me was dogfooding, but it has 
bought me nothing but frustration.

There are some good things there.  The activity security and the collaboration 
support are good ideas,  I can't help feeling that those bits should be kept 
and the rest done from scratch.

Sorry if this post irritates some of you.  I'm not usually a mailing list 
ranter, but the olpc project is something that I think is really quite 
important for the world.