[IAEP] For Sugar Everywhere, Google-ize!

[Walter Bender]

FWIW, there are already some efforts underway to port some Sugar
activities to Android... hope to learn from those efforts in the short
term.

-walter

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 2:09 PM, C. Scott Ananian <cscott at cscott.net> wrote:
> Hi folks.  I wish to make a radical proposal:
> Sugar's days on OLPC hardware are numbered.  Sugar as presently written is
> not developing quickly enough, and hasn't made significant progress towards
> supporting the new touchscreen devices coming down the pike.
> This isn't a problem: it's an opportunity!
> I believe that SugarLabs should radically embrace "Sugar Everywhere".  In my
> opinion, this means attempting to target Android or ChromeOS with Sugar
> activities as quickly as possible.
> "But these OSes aren't geared for learning!" you might respond.  Neither was
> Linux, until Sugar arrived!  Nor was GNOME!
> First, let's take a serious look at where we *actually* are with respect to
> self-programmability of Sugar.
> There isn't a serious IDE.  None of the Sugar software is accessible via the
> Journal.  Much of it is actually writable only by root!
> Python is a great pedagogic language, but the best tutorials to show how
> Sugar can be hacked start by teaching kids vi!
> Viewed dispassionately, we have fallen very short of the 'view source'
> ideals, and activities like Scratch or Etoys provide a much better pedagogic
> introduction to programming than attempting to read through the python
> sources of Sugar does.
> If Sugar were to rebase on Android, one of the first tasks would be to
> figure out how to run as many of the existing activities in Android as
> possible.  This can be done via projects like Jython, which implement Python
> in Java, and by reimplementing some of the underlying Sugar collaboration
> and storage services.   The activities are the most important part of Sugar!
>  We don't need to reimplement the frame, or activity management, or
> networking configuration (at first) -- take advantage of the hardware
> support of Android and build on its OS services, and concentrate SugarLab's
> limited energies on the activities.
> In addition to getting Scratch/Etoys/Speak/Pippy to run on Android, the
> Sugar community can contribute a simple Java compiler to make Android
> more-fully self-hosting.  Perhaps some small hacks to Android are needed to
> allow it to install apps from its own filesystem.  Android is open source,
> go for it!  The result may be a slightly tweaked android, but
> Sugar-on-Android will be portable to hundreds of different low-cost phones
> and tablets from any number of different manufacturers.  Sugar everywhere!
> Or perhaps consider rebasing Sugar on ChromeOS.  Existing Sugar applications
> could run in a plugin, or as a Chrome extension.  In addition, new Sugar
> activities could be written in *web standard languages*.  In my travels in
> South America, Python is still an oddball out-lyer.  But universities are
> eager to teach HTML and Javascript.  Further, Javascript interpreters in
> browsers are many times faster than Python, and getting faster all the time.
>  Consider also that the "Chrome Debugger" is already a *much* better IDE
> than Pippy, and already fulfills the most important goal of the "view
> source" manifesto -- you can click on *any visible thing* on the webpage,
> and see immediately what code produced it.  We're still a very long way from
> that goal in Sugar/Python.  Again, we can build on the system support of
> Chrome OS (starting apps, configuring networking, preferences, etc) and
> build activities as web applications (which can use a special chrome
> extension for additional services, including collaboration and the journal)
> which can again run on a large number of different devices.
> Portable devices are the future.  Lots of manufacturers are already spending
> enormous amounts of effort on hardware porting and all the UI and network
> and system management tasks for their devices.  Sugar shouldn't need to
> reproduce this work, or be tied to particular hardware.  By capitalizing on
> the existing work done for Android or ChromeOS, SugarLabs can concentrate on
> what makes Sugar great: strong support by educators, excellent activities,
> and a focus on making the system introspectable and hackable.
>   --scott
> --
>                          ( http://cscott.net/ )
>
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-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org