On 24.06.2010, at 15:29, David Farning wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 4:49 AM, Bert Freudenberg <b...@freudenbergs.de>
> wrote:
>>
>> To that extent I proposed to the Etoys developers to follow the Sugar
>> development cycle more closely. And that's what we're going to do.
>
> Thanks Bert. That will help those of us working downstream a great
> deal. As a side note, what is the situation with Etoys vs scratch?
Why do you think there's a "vs"? Both have their place.
> Many teachers are very familiar with (and love) scratch and wonder why
> sugar ships Etoys:-(
>
> david
While Scratch is less powerful than Etoys, it certainly is more polished and
easier to get into. That was one of its design goals - to let teenagers have
immediate fun in an hour after school, without needing too much guidance. Etoys
OTOH was designed to be used by a skilled teacher as part of a larger
curriculum - and it is a prototype that "escaped into the wild" without seeing
much polishing.
So I can see why teachers love Scratch. I love Scratch, too. It requires much
less effort to get started. Certainly enough, Scratch comes pre-installed on
many OLPC builds (and OLPC recently sponsored me to add basic Journal support).
Besides, the xo bundle can easily be downloaded.
But for inclusion in Sugar itself there are more criteria than just ease of
use. Like the willingness of developers to work in the Sugar community. Which
is almost synonymous to the development process itself being open. Or making
serious efforts to "fit" into Sugar - be that UI design, or supporting
collaboration etc.
Etoys is working in that direction, and also welcoming contributions. The
Scratch developers have other priorities. In a way, Scratch is so beautifully
simple *because* its development is so tightly controlled. It's like an Apple
product compared to a Linux one. The Linux program might be more powerful, but
many people would still prefer the simpler, polished, less confusing Apple
product. Others see beyond the flaws of the Linux program, and some dive in and
help improving it. Given time, money, and effort it might even attract users in
the general public ;)
Btw, a good way for teachers to learn about Etoys is attending Squeakfest:
http://squeakfest.org/
Coming back to your question, "why Sugar ships Etoys", it's because Etoys
developers care about it, and the others find it to be useful. Which is the
case for anything that Sugar ships.
- Bert -
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