On 10/03/2007, at 1:52 PM, Michael Cohen wrote: > purpose language or post script etc. Although it may appear that > there is more > of a learning curve to get started its actually lower in the long > term because > you dont tend to hit a capability ceiling very quickly. For > example I one used
I agree, which is why I use Objective C with OpenGL and Cocoa, along with Smalltalk. This is the simplest and most functional combination of tools that I can find to cover a wide range of requirements - from hardware speed (via ASM in C) to flexible and realtime (scripting layer). I eye other languages like Ruby with some envy for their ease of use, but my overall need is speed where I need it. > Depending of the skills of the target audience, it may be better > to aim for > simple empowerment first, like power use of open office - write > some JS or OO > macros to do something simple etc. This simple empowerment allows > people to > see that computers _can_ be bent to _your_ will. This is the pre- > requisite of The difficulty of using free software for education is that most available (and well written) code is by professionals for professionals, so they're too far up the abstraction ladder. There needs to be a few rungs down for those making the climb... to quickly realise the link between what you want, and seeing it happen. Unfortunately, this mainly belongs in the commercial domain, as money is used to incite professional programmers to create and polish a limited product to the levels where it is appealing to those who are (temporarily) limited. The other problem is too many half-done free solutions for the same problem, so we end up with toolkits like Gtk (bllleeeyyurrch, and I say that as a C programmer so I have every reason for trying to like it), and Qt which has the disadvantages of being commercial where it matters and free where it doesn't matter. In contrast, Cocoa is a single toolkit for the OS X platform, done well and enabling the easy creation of things like Impromptu, as programmer effort can be spent on developing the new features of interest rather than the majority of time being spent re-inventing the wheel. Free software is still in the wheel re-invention stage as there's nobody with enough authority to say "this is what everyone should use"... as Steve Jobs did with Cocoa. For that reason alone, there isn't enough support around free libraries to make them definitive reference material. The disparity is readily apparent as soon as you look at the documentation. With Gtk, I spent a year Googling around at random to find documentation that referred to old versions, trying to extract the parts that were still relevant and going through Gtk source code and struggling against bad decisions deeply buried in their code. I burnt out and nearly stopped programming altogether, and that's speaking as someone who already had the skills trying to be taught to these school aged people. There does need to be a proportionate amount of reward for exerted effort, and using a stable commercial environment gives me the ability to click on any type or constant in my code and immediately access 1GB of professionally written documentation about the exact version of libraries and tools that I'm using. Everything I read is relevant, everything I see is up to date, and nothing that I see is about something that no longer exists (unless flagged as deprecated). So, despite 15 years of free software, I'm forced to conclude that when something matters... you pay for it. Free software is very valuable as raw material, but I'd rather have a screwdriver or a pair of pliers than a raw lump of ore and a Wikipedia page telling me how to refine it. Since education is very important as it creates the next generation (who will hopefully be empowered enough to lovingly take care of us in rest homes as we die!), we need to pay where needed to give them what they need. I would expect very very very very very, and pathologically insane, few programmers if Gtk were used to teach them about computers. I would expect far more, and comparatively sane, programmers resulting from approachable and rewarding environments. The fact that Daryl is completely insane is from trying to build half a computer (Arthur) with a blown up 600MB drive. :) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ sapug mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/sapug
