[IAEP] Which Language?

[DancesWithCars]

For a college level class, starting with Python
(as most Activities are probably Python, and
Sugar seems to be implemented in it),
but will probably drop into C (kernel and other linux
plus application stuff).

But Scratch, EToys, Emacs, etc provide some
other languages under the hood (even if in another
name)...

So far the documentation for the languages
is lacking, like finding PIL, etc.  So they may
need to create a documentation addon,
as even pydoc is crashing for me...

Back in my day it was Pascal, then C,
then Java (had to do it myself as a thesis),
but I'd already started with SAIL, ALGOL,
DEC-10, etc as the first pre-PCs
were coming out..


On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 12:33 AM, Gary C Martin <gary at garycmartin.com> wrote:
> Hi Caryl,
>
> On 26 Sep 2009, at 05:00, Caryl Bigenho wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, Ben wrote in the IAEP list:
>>
>> "My feeling is that the most important thing we can do in this area
>> is to
>> make it easy to write Activities that are intrinsically cross-
>> platform.
>> To borrow a phrase, one way to do this is to choose languages, and
>> interpreters, that are incapable of expressing platform dependencies."
>>
>> So I have a question for you folks. I am in discussion with a
>> college CS prof who
>> would like to teach beginning programming with XOs. He is interested
>> in trying
>> several different languages, but I am interested in pointing him
>> toward the one
>> that would result in the most universally usable Activities with the
>> idea that
>> his students would be able to write Activities as class projects
>> that could then
>> be widely distributed.
>>
>> It would be great if they would be, as Ben suggests, cross-platform.
>> By that, I mean
>> usable on the XO-1, XO-1.5, SoaS, live CD, etc. for PCs and Intel
>> Macs. Of course my
>> dream ideal is that they would also be able to be run on the old
>> PowerPC Macs that
>> are still widely used in the public schools, but that is probably
>> too much too hope for.
>>
>> So...the question is, what should I tell him?
>
> Python.
>
> Regards,
> --Gary
>
> P.S. I can provide more ifs and buts, if you really want, but given
> the lengths and distractions of some recent threads, I thought I'd
> just give you the answer, straight up ;-)
>
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



-- 
DancesWithCars
leave the wolves behind ;-)