[sword-devel] What OLPC and the people who will pay really want. Re: olpc discussion

Thu Apr 26 11:40:07 MST 2007

OLPC started with a lot of Python and has moved almost totally to
Python for several reasons.  The Chief Architect said that the
big lie of Open Source is that you can read the code.  He went on
to say that less than 2% of the people can do that.  Therefore OLPC
is designed with a special button.  You press it and it helps you
learn what is being done and how it is being done.  Little
children cannot learn several programming languages.  Computers
have been increasingly important and that importance will increase
at a positively accelerating rate.  OLPC is an attempt to give
children the possibility of being fully prepared for the world as
it will be when they graduate.  The bottom line is OLPC is being 
done and paid for to contribute to the total education of the
children who receive them.  What we think is cool has little 
bearing on the project.  There are those who are bitterly against
any religious or even Western influence.  If that is all we have to
offer, it will be probably be rejected even more than prayer in the
public schools.  If instead we will use Python, playful learning, and
all of the things which will contribute most to the children's
education then it will be accepted in many more places.  

Many people, not me, were jumping on the educatainment bandwagon.  
But most of those who are behind OLPC reject educatainment in favor
of what I consider to the much better choice, playful learning.   The
biggest contributors will be the governments who buy them by the 
millions.  We cannot change the design choices that have already been
made.  And I do not think significantly better choices could have been
made.  What we can do is develop the best stuff for the children and
package it in ways which will make the governments want what we
develop and even more of it than we can develop.  The task is not
easy.  I have been thinking about how to best accomplish this every
day and night since the OLPC was announced.  

A major goal of the OLPC project is to have children helping each other.
If we are going to provide stuff which will be acceptable, teamwork
must be our M.O..

I can arrange to be available before and after EuroPython.  If you 
want to share my strengths and help me overcome my development 
weaknesses for the OLPC project, I'll do my best to do the same for
you.

Python, a volunteer
DrStovallFoundation 

--- Jason Galyon <jtgalyon at gmail.com> wrote:

> Python is used heavily in the OLPC software, so you do not need a 
> separate VM for squeak.  I attended the US Python Conference (PyCon) and 
> heard a good discussion of OLPC's architecture.  Python is used 
> everywhere on the system except for areas like Xorg where speed and 
> existing non-Python code base is available.
> 
> Jason
> 
> DJ Ortley wrote:
> > You can download squeak and play with it on a Windows box without much 
> > trouble.  I did it a while ago, but I didn't personally like it.  Then 
> > again, I'm not a 12 year old (no comments about my mental age please, 
> > thank you very much :P  )
> > 
> > Though, if squeak promises to be an easy to use programming interface 
> > that can be manipulated easily, that might be an interesting sword 
> > frontend regardless.  Give the end user the power over what they want 
> > their software to do instead of us programmer types.
> > 
> > 
> > I'd like to address the 'connected to the internet' thing a bit.  I've 
> > been following off and on this project, and while the ad hoc networking 
> > and internet connectivity stuff is big, the machines are designed around 
> > being something a student can take home and work with.
> > 
> > Go to school, download a couple books from the server or your friends, 
> > go home and read.  That seems to be an important part of the design 
> > paradigm.  If a student has access to the internet all the time with one 
> > of these, then there's no need to do any work as there are plenty of 
> > servers out there that provide access to the bible on-line (remember, 
> > this thing runs Firefox.)
> > 
> > I wouldn't be too concerned about governments/humanists not wanting 
> > religious software running on these things.  It'll either make its way 
> > onto a machine or not depending on if the owner wants it on there (I DO 
> > NOT suggest we write a bible launching trojan horse/virus for these 
> > things...bad idea..bad bad..)
> > 
> > My personal thoughts are that, something like OpenDocument type files be 
> > made available of sword modules that can be downloaded.  Maybe an output 
> > filter for the OpenDocument format can be created.  Then there would be 
> > the benefit of having files that can be read in a variety of programs.
> > 
> > Of course, the disadvantage to doing that would be that we wouldn't get 
> > to write code...
> > 
> > -DJ
> > 
> > 
> > On 4/25/07, *Sean Kennedy* < sean.worker at gmail.com 
> > <mailto:sean.worker at gmail.com>> wrote:
> > 
> >     A Squeaky, sneaky Bible application sounds cool.  :-)
> > 
> >     On 24/04/07, *Darius Clarke* <socinian at gmail.com
> >     <mailto:socinian at gmail.com>> wrote:
> > 
> >         Also, the complete IDE is built into the image. All source code
> >         for the IDE is included in just one other file. The image is
> >         compact since it's just an image of the running memory. The
> >         incremental compiler is built into the VM so you can test it and
> >         change it ... while it's running.
> > 
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