[sugar] Pippy and Calculate

[Walter Bender]

While in the abstract, Yoshiki has a great idea, I see three problems:

(1) Especially for young children who are just beginning to read and
write, imposing Python and its syntax on them is to high of a hurdle
for accessing a calculator;
(2) While I love Pippy, it has a long ways to go towards being
friendly to the uninitiated: there is no debugger, for example; This
is fine for the purposes for which it was designed, but to use it for
a general purpose tool is a real stretch;
(3) Reinier has added a very approachable feature set to the latest
versions of the Calculator Activity: it lets you define variables and
hence contruct word problems. It isn't a full-blown programmng
environment, but it is one of many stepping stones for younger
children.

I would almost go so far as to agree with Yoshiki that for the more
advanced calculator features: trig fucntions, etc., we do make the
leap into Pippy or Etoys, but there is something simple and
approachable to Reinier's work.

-walter