Hi, Chris, > (I'm the Pippy author.)
(We didn't have much time to discuss with you while I was in Cambridge two weeks ago...) > > Imagine if Pippy has a button called "Print!", which would be > > located right next to the "Run!" button. And, if "Print!" prints > > out the results of running the program into the bottom pane, that > > is pretty much all we need. (For the record, the workspace in > > Etoys has been there from day one for this purpose.) > > This is a useful idea, thanks. At the moment, Pippy doesn't keep any > variable/program state inbetween "Run!"s (each run is a new Python > interpreter), so there is no way to do "Ans*2"-style calculations. > It sounds like you want "Print!" to keep a single interpreter that > reinterprets the source pane at each click. I didn't think about that aspect, but keeping state will be useful. > The first version of Pippy used a single Python interpreter that > executed the program source code in this way, without losing state, > but that makes it possible to write programs that will not run on a > fresh interpreter later (as they refer to state that was generated > as a result of code that no longer exists, or a previous run of the > code), so I decided against keeping that. Yeh, that can happen in a typical workspace programming. But in Pippy's setting, it would not be much of a problem. "Keep" button can store the state altogether into a journal entry. > Oh! We could have an "example" in Pippy that, when run, gives you a > Python interactive shell. That should work well; it gives you the > mode you want (without requiring an extra button), and is useful in > any case. I'll do that. > > I don't think Python's evaluations are useful as a calculator to > a child, though. You would have to explain this: > > >>> 2+2 > 4 > >>> 3/4 > 0 > > I would like to add a simple graphics screen to Pippy, but I don't > intend it to get many more features past that -- I'd like to keep > it at a simple introduction to input/output programming. Yeah, I was aware of the division (/) problem (when I see the last digit in Calculate falls off to the next line. It would be nice if you can override the division operator... > > We have a real problem of shortage of man-power, so replacing > > smaller activities that take more time to maintain and document > > with more powerful ones is probably a good thing. > > Just a note that Reinier Heeres is a volunteer, so isn't pulling OLPC > man-power away from any other projects. Well, a volunteer can certainly contribute one of OLPC projects, right? I now see that the timeframe and practical matters will probably prevent us going to the nice merging point between these different projects. However, I still contend that similarity is close enough. So, for example Pippy doesn't have to be confined "this is a Python thing" mind, but take advantage of similarity. -- Yoshiki _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
