[Its.an.education.project] An OLPC Development Model

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 09.05.2008, at 09:56, david at lang.hm wrote:

> which is why I fail to see the big point of Sugar.
> [...]
> a perfect example was the suggeation to make the sugarized  
> activities use
> a standard file picker call so that it could go to the journal on  
> the XO
> machine, or to a normal file selecteor window on other desktops.

Your example indicates that you indeed fail to see the "big point" of  
Sugar. The point is to not have a document-centric environment, but an  
activity-centric one. Verbs rather than nouns. Yes it gets  
philosophical here. And I'm not the best to explain it.

Maybe an analogy helps. Many developers fail to see the "big point" of  
object-oriented programming. For them, it's just that structs have  
function pointers now, so what's the big deal? But that misses the  
point completely, oo is all about decoupling and encapsulating  
concepts, it's a philosophy rather than an implementation technique.  
Or maybe the analogy does not help, depending on which camp one is in.

Back to your example: even if all the world thinks applications with  
file dialogs are "normal" that does not imply it has to be that way.

"Don't be misled by the enormous flow of money into bad defacto  
standards for unsophisticated buyers using poor adaptations of  
incomplete ideas." -- Alan Kay

We do want to create something better than the status-quo. We may fail  
for a gazillion of reasons, but we're trying anyway. Children deserve  
the best, our future is in their hands.

- Bert -