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

[Walter Bender]

I'm going to land squarely in the middle on this issue.

I agree with Sam that what we have to offer in the world of a GNU/Linux
desktop is far far better than any alternatives I have seen. The
opportunity for growth there is demonstrably great. We have pretty decent
offerings in Fedora, Debian, and its relatively popular Ubuntu instance.
And I don't think the GNU desktop is going to disappear as rapidly as the
pundits predict, despite the popularity of Android and iStuff,  (And I
think there are some serious problems of pedagogy in the solutions offered
in the smartphone space.) The GNU desktop is going to be a relatively small
market for the foreseeable future, but one where we can show thought
leadership, reach some kids directly, and influence the rest of the ed tech
industry through the tangible demonstration of our ideas. One spark of hope
is that the Maker Movement -- the ed tech idea de jour -- is to a large
extent Linux based. Might make sense to revisit improving the Sugar
experience on RPi and other platforms popular with makers.

Chromebooks are interesting in that (a) they can run GNU and consequently
native Sugar quite well -- but I doubt too many schools will go down that
path; and (b) you can almost treat them like computers in that the form
factor is bit more friendly to programming, word processing, and other
tool-oriented activities. That said, I hear rumors that Chrome OS will be
subsumed by Android, so it is not obvious that it is a long-term viable
solution any more than GNU. And the service model that is inherent to the
web is really problematic from the point of view of children's privacy,
security, and freedom.

That said, there is something to be said for trying to meet people halfway.
The browser is ubiquitous. If we can develop within the context of Sugar
desktop and the browser, it is to a large extent a win-win. This is why I
have been wrestling with JavaScript in my newer activities. (For similar
reasons, I have tried to make most of my activities run in GNOME as well as
Sugar.) It opens some doors. While not perfect, the Sugar JS activity
experience is decent. And hopefully Lionel's effort will help us reach kids
we would not have otherwise reached, even with a lesser solution than GNU.
It is important that as we develop in this space we keep in mind some
principles, such as making our source code readable, making sure things can
run locally, focusing on tools rather than apps, providing explicit
mechanisms for reflect, etc.

-walter

On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 2:59 AM, <sam at sam.today> wrote:

> 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]
>



-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
<http://www.sugarlabs.org>
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