[Sugar-devel] Python is good - don't waste time (was Re: The future of Sugar on XO-1s)

[sam at sam.today]

Hi Dave,

On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 10:46 AM, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
> I would be happy if by 2020 the "classic" Sugar desktop was totally 
> gone. Zero Python! In its place could be a laptop OS derived from 
> ChromiumOS, plus a nodejs web server serving on localhost that is 
> stuffed full of activities and content.

Why?  Why do we throw out the great technologies we have now?  Why do 
we waste out time replacing Telepathy (amazing back end for 
collaboration)?  Why do we waste our time replacing GtkSourceView?  
AbiWord?  WebKitGtk?  Gtk?  These are great technologies.  Sure they 
are not the current trend.  But unlike your proposed nodejs server, we 
don't end up in callback hell.

We have a technology stack that we have used for over 10 years.  Those 
people who OLPC paid to start writing sugar made good choices; they 
left us with a great foundation even as OLPC down sizes.  It works 
great across keyboard, mouse and touch (can sugarizer even show a 
tooltip on long touch?).  It works great on slow computers (my trusty 
old Core2Duo laptop runs sugar faster than Sugarizer/webkit).  It works 
great off-line (collaboration over salut doesn't need a centeral 
server). And all the activities are written in python now.

Why waste time to javashit it?  You can install GNU on a chromebook, 
you can install GNU on computer, you can install GNU on some tablets.  
Those are the pedagogic devices of now and the future.  Those run 
faster with Gtk than with WebKit.

Don't waste time.

Thanks,
Sam

[GNU in this post refers to GNU/Linux]
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/attachments/20160406/1d59b03e/attachment-0001.html>