OK Arthur, that's more clear, what you're saying. Alan makes no secret of the fact that he's a SmallTalk Slayer, kinda like Frankenstein, PhD doctor chasing down his last best superpowered monster.
His magnum opus was pioneering and brilliant, but isn't what the world needed ad infinitum. As a creator-still-living, he has the integrity to try shutting it down (most creators leave that to future generations). Problem is: it's everywhere and has a lot of followers, even still. Python he didn't create, and he'll never get credit for it, but he still wants OO to live up to its promises. Python is a very clear implementation of the OO paradigm. A lot of us are excited about it for just that reason. In teaming up with the Python community, I think Alan is responding to people who think the reason a glorious Renaissance in education never occured, is because of some failing in the toys. He's like a toymaker surrounded by still-unhappy children. Why why? Given the energy behind Python, maybe here's another chance to get them laughing and playing and loving their laptops. Ah, but maybe we'll just make all the same mistakes all over again? I come from another point of view. Engineering has done its job, met people way more than half way, and the reason we've not had a glorious Renaissance is more like the reason we didn't get that big Peace Dividend after the Berlin wall came down. Too many are cynically invested in mediocrity, as a way to retain control in the way they understand control, which involves lots of intentional fearmongering. Fighting this brand of control freak can't be done at the level of computer language design. If it could, we'd already have gnu math in the schools and way more 8th graders would know who Guido and Alan were. A few might even be using PyGeo. But the reality is: teachers are afraid of Python, of hackers, of geekdom, of technology. We live in a culture of fear and ignorance. We had that student on earlier, complaining he couldn't demo has class project, because even a Linux boot CD was to scary for the school's IT cult. They regarded it as a threat to their authority. So whereas I understand and appreciate your nuanced analysis of what makes Kay tick vis-a-vis Python etc., I'm not about to pit Squeakers against Snake Charmers, and turn this into some psychoanalysis of business sector smarminess (a smarminess you claim to know a whole lot about). To me, that's a sideshow. I'm more like that lead narrator in the movie 'Why We Fight' (about Eisenhower's dream-come-true): he wants to find out what happened to our Peace Dividend. Yes, I'm encountering smarminess there too (a freezer full of cash in some Congressman's house, who woulda thunk it), but this is more a job for the FBI and so forth, not for gentle elves and their games with glass beads (we collaborate through the X-Files). I'm happy list Alan Kay as one of my heros, along with Seymour Papert, the South African mathematician. That doesn't mean I take my orders from him, or plan to spend the rest of my days in Squeakland. More it means I'm glad to see the Python community thinking about the bigger picture. This computers-in-education puzzle has been on the table for a long time by now. We need to see more of the pieces, and how we'll get them is through collaboration. Just having Guido and Alan meet, have some beers at a JurysDoyle, is a big accomplishment. We're building a more self-aware system, and that's a good thing. Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
