[PLUG] Not Windows or OS X

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
>>>>>> "M" == M Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb at cesmail.net> writes:
> 
> M> So ... it's hackable at the software level. The built in software 
> M> includes something called Etoys, which is Squeak, although I'm not sure 
> M> how much of Squeak is there.
> 
> I just did a show for labwithleo.com yesterday on this, so I've researched
> it a bit.
> 
> The Squeak Etoys image is available for download at
> <http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Etoys>.  It's a complete "base" image with a few
> additional packages to deal with "Sugar", the OLPC O/S, and a nice startup
> screen to send you to some preloaded Etoys packages.  It's quite usable with a
> normal Squeak VM though... you can get one for Linux from www.squeakland.org.
> 
> I find this really cool... etoys is like "electronic Lego", using tile-based
> programming to effectively write the underlying smalltalk classes and
> methods. As part of my 5-minute demo on the TV show, I "drew" a car, animated
> it to go in a circle, then "drew" a steering wheel and hooked it up to steer
> the car.  If you have a child that is looking at programming, the OLPC Etoys
> preload is very very very cool and fun.  Heck, even Leo Laporte said he was
> going to start playing with it again.  And once you get beyond the great
> stuff you can do with tiles, you can start "peering under the hood", and
> use it as a stepping stone to learn real Smalltalk(tm).

I'm underwhelmed by the full Squeak. I've tried to like it a couple of 
times, bought both commonly-available books on the subject, etc. I have 
a couple of problems with it.

1. The UI is totally orthogonal to all the habits I've acquired over the 
past few years. I'm used to "right-click menus", among other things.

2. Everything stays as you left it. If you move something, erase 
something, change something, there's not a convenient "undo".

3. It's layers and layers of some other peoples' idea of what a computer 
should be like. It may be intuitive for the people that designed it, but 
it isn't to me.

I downloaded a VMware image of a recent OLPC last night and did a little 
playing with Sugar (the main UI) and eToys. First of all, I *like* 
Sugar. It's very much like the HP-100LX, the advanced TI calcularots, 
most palmtop PC UIs and other "instant-on" PCs I've worked with. You 
basically open up an "activity" and it stays open. If you run out of 
RAM, you remove an activity to make room for it.

eToys, on the other hand, is just as annoying to me as Squeak, although 
there is a lot less clutter on the desktop when it first comes up than 
there is on a full Squeak.

But what I *really* like about the machine is the synthesizer. It looks 
like it has pretty much all of CSound built in.
>