Android, OLPC, and native hosting

[John Watlington]

On Dec 27, 2009, at 5:52 PM, NoiseEHC wrote:

>
>> Does Android not host its development tools because it doesn't run  
>> the
>> X Window System?  Since X already runs on most of the hardware that
>> Android does, that wouldn't be too hard to remedy -- and would  
>> benefit
>> the whole Android community.
>>
> Actually, no. The .class -> .dex compiler consumes an enormous  
> amount of
> memory, so it is out of the question at least for now.

How much is enormous ?  A laptop/tablet is likely to have more than
a smartphone...

> However what I do not get is why would it be good for an education  
> project if it would be
> self hosting at all? As I see an education project's main goal is to
> support creating quality educational resources (like curricula)  
> cheaply,
> is not it?

You can't deny kids the ability to create their own activities  
(applications, whatever)
Pippy is an example of a simple way to introduce kids to activity  
programming in
python, allowing them to easily create and share activities.

I wasn't really suggesting that mobile device users recompile their  
entire operating
system, although you can't deny that an XO-1.5 is well capable of  
doing so.

Cheers,
wad