[IAEP] [fonc] Barbarians at the gate! (Project Nell)

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>wrote:

> If you're going to base it on Javascript, at least make it
> Coffeescript-like. I also agree that some basic parallelism primitives
> would be great; it is probably possible to build these into a
> Coffeescript-like dialect using JS under the hood (though they'd probably
> optimize even better if you could implement them natively instead of in
> JS).


I think you are underestimating the value of using a standard
widely-deployed language.  I love languages as much as the next guy---but
our previous learning environment (Sugar) has had incredible difficulty
getting local support outside the US because it is written in *Python*.
 Python is "not a commercially viable language" (not my words) and you
can't even take university classes in Python in many countries (say,
Uruguay) because there is no company behind it and no one who will give you
a "certificate" for having learned it.

This is very sad, but the true state of affairs.

JavaScript is not perfect, but at heart it is a functional object-oriented
language which is pretty darn close to Good Enough.  There are huge
benefits to using a language which is supported by training materials all
over the web, university systems outside the US, etc, etc.

I am open to *very* slight extensions to JavaScript -- OMeta/JS and
quasiquote might squeeze in -- but they have to be weighed against their
costs.  Subsets are even more problematic -- once you start subsetting,
then you are throwing away compatibility with all the wealth of JavaScript
libraries out there, in addition to confusing potential contributors who
are trying to type in examples they found in some book.
  --scott

-- 
      ( http://cscott.net )
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/attachments/20120314/aa8f0a17/attachment.html>