[sugar] adding versions to journal/datastore

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 3:55 PM, Greg Smith <gregsmitholpc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
> This is a great discussion and very helpful design interaction!
>
> Just sampling a few items on this thread I have two high level comments:
>
> 1 - The primary requirement for the Journal is to never lose data. I
> think there are some known issues with the datastore but I'm not sure
> where they are tracked. The most important case is to not lose data when
> the users exits the activity or keeps. The secondary case is to do
> interim saves so that if the XO or activity crashes or the XO is shut
> down we still save something recent.
>
> Please don't try to extend the Journal paradigm until we nail, provably
> and completely.
>
> 2 - In terms of better organization of Journal data. It hasn't come up
> as a problem from the field in my experience. It can still be improved
> and making it easier to optimize the available storage seems like a high
> priority based on NAND full issues. We should still consider better data
> organization and access, especially if we can make something that really
> resonates with kids. We especially need to address saving and accessing
> in the collaborative creation process.
>
> The concern I have with the discussion so far is that its way too
> complicated. I don't think any K - 6 grade kid will have a good
> conception of a "tree" or hierarchy. It will be incomprehensible and
> work like black magic to them. Even the idea that the newest is at the
> top is not universal (see:
> http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/localization/2008-September/001583.html).
> The notion of "size" or quantity is not the same for a kid as an adult
> either. One Piaget experiment I read about showed that most kids below a
> certain age would assume that 5 items spread far apart were more than 6
> items placed close together. Throw in many items of the same screen
> space each with a different size in MBs and they will completely miss
> that one quantity is more than the other.
>
> I don't mean to make this impossible to design. I suggest that we make
> sure we nail the reliability piece first. Then come up with some
> experiments which cover use cases and include mock-ups. Then test them
> with kids. If we design this based on our own understanding of what
> works for us, we can make something useful and interesting but it may
> not be optimized for kids. Optimizing for the ways kid's minds work is
> something we can do better than anyone else, if we can get good at it.
>
> My 2 cents. I apologize for being such a skeptic. Lately I feel like I'm
> swimming up stream. If the river is flowing towards consensus and we can
> make something short term which we can learn from, don't let me slow you
> down.

A huge +1 by me on this, Greg. Despite being the one that incouraged
Tomeu to explore versions...

Marco