Rob wrote:
Unfortunately, the presence of famous people
doesn't automatically
make a project intuitive, modern, or good for teaching kids.
I totally agree with
this. But still I respect them. Not the famous
people, but great innovators.
Squeak needs some updates, and maybe it needs
new blood to make them
happen, even if there are no PhD's contributing code anymore.
I couldn't
care less for PhD's. I'm for self-education. Squeak, BTW, has
been inspired by the construtivism theories and by softwares like Logo
and HyperCard. Not really meant for PhD's.
I believe HyperCard influenced some of the design issues with eToys, not
squeak. I could be wrong.
The teaching concept of Logo was reportedly an influence on smalltalk.
I personally think it needs some changes to the underlying language to
make it accessible to first-time coders
(scriptHello/self.setCharacters("Hello World")? How is that better
than TO Hello/PRINT [Hello World]/END or good ol' Sub Main/Print
"Hello World"/End? Or Sub Form_Open/Me.Text = "Hello World"/End if
you need to be all OOPsy.)
Transcript show: 'Hello world'.