[IAEP] Journal criticism

Albert Cahalan acahalan at gmail.com
Thu May 28 06:18:35 EDT 2009


On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 04:58:17AM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
>>Tomeu Vizoso writes:

>>> I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that we
>>> distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented
>>> features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but
>>> because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with nothing
>>> that brings new value compared to existing desktops.
>>
>>You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops
>>are at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features
>>of modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.
>
> I flat out disagree that Sugar should be a learning experience towards
> using alternative user interfaces.
>
> In that mindset we should mimic Word, Excel and the Windows desktop, not
> for the quality of their interface designs, but simply because they are
> expremely popular so getting acquainted to them is "very valuable for
> children".

To the extent that there are common features that are highly
unlikely to change across versions or even OSes, definitely.

MacOS System 6, MacOS X, OS/2 Warp, and Windows Vista
have certain basic features in common. It's a safe bet to say that
most of these features will remain in the computers of 2017.


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