[OLPC-Games] Interested in the Google Summer of Code

[Don Hopkins]

That's a wonderful idea, and I encourage you to pursue it!
Alan Kay was suggesting doing something like that to document and model 
the behavior of SimCity (aka Micropolis), so kids can understand and 
modify it.

I've posted some stuff on the OLPC wiki and my blog about that:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Summer_of_Code/Ideas
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Micropolis
http://www.DonHopkins.com

I'd be glad to discuss it further with you!

    -Don


Bobby Powers wrote:
> Hi, I'm a master's student at the University of Bergen and I'm 
> interested in bringing System Dynamics to the XO.  Before I start, if 
> there is a better mailing list for this just let me know (I briefly 
> looked through the other ones liked from the Wiki, and this seemed the 
> most appropriate).
>
> System Dynamics (SD) [1][2] aims to help people understand the world 
> by explicitly modeling how pieces of it work and then performing 
> experiments in these models.  It is used around the world, frequently 
> in majority world countries, in development planning [3], for example. 
>  More formally, its a methodology for examining and describing the 
> behavior of complex systems with an emphasis on the effects that 
> feedback loops and time delays have.  At a basic level you have to 
> specify the mathematical equations for the different parts of your 
> system.   The same problems can be solved by writing code in a 
> programming language (I had a course taught in Fortran a year ago...), 
> but usually in SD the modeling is done using a visual editor where you 
> can show causal relationships, stocks and flows graphically.  I 
> personally think the biggest short-fallings of the discipline are the 
> barriers to entry: the current software is far from intuitive and all 
> the major commercial offerings (there are no FLOSS products) [4][5][6] 
> are very expensive (educational licenses alone are frequently > $500 
> USD). 
>
> Will Wright studied SD and used ideas from it when designing SimCity 
> [7].  So I have several things I would like to work on:  first is a 
> core simulator that can transform equations into code (I'm currently 
> working on this for my master's thesis, but don't have and funding. 
> eesh): I'm using the JIT library from the LLVM project to be able to 
> do this.  Second I want to create a Sugar modeling interface that 
> makes it easy and fun to create models and explore their results 
> (collaboratively, I hope!), and third I want to hook this into 
> Metropolis.  I think it would just be so cool if you could click an 
> icon in Metropolis and have the visual model that controls the 
> Metropolis world pop up (in the aforementioned editor) and be able not 
> only to fiddle with parameters, but change the structure!  If all of 
> this goes smoothly and there is more time, I would love to add the 
> ability for models to interact with and manipulate geospatial data.
>
>
> I guess I am looking for people's reaction, is this something people 
> like?  I'm certainly willing to adapt myself to the collective needs 
> and I wanted to get a discussion started before the application 
> deadline.  Oh I guess a little more background on me:  I attended RPI 
> in NY, USA for 2 years studying computer engineering, but transferred 
> because I wanted to do something more applied.  I 
> studied environmental studies (at SUNY ESF) for a couple years, and 
> got back into coding through classes on ecological modeling and GIS. 
>  I've been pretty heavily coding models, algorithms and interfaces for 
> the past 2 years, mainly in C#, ObjC and some Fortran, but the past 3 
> months I've been using C++ for 8 hours a day and Python here and 
> there.  I've got a Mac with Linux (both FC8 and openSUSE10.3) and 
> Windows, and I've just started over the past few weeks to pick up GTK, 
> although I've used Cairo in a project for a couple months.  I've only 
> dabbled with the XO, but am really looking forward to developing 
> bundles for it.
>
>
> I'm eager to hear what you think! 
> yours,
> Bobby Powers
>
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics
> [2] http://www.systemdynamics.org/
> [3] http://www.millenniuminstitute.net/
> [4] http://www.vensim.com/
> [5] http://www.powersim.com/
> [6] http://www.iseesystems.com/
> [7] http://www.futuresalon.org/2004/11/will_wright_kic.html
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