An interesting thing

[Jeffrey Drake]

Could quite easily create a major [large] platform besides Windows.

I would expect to eventually see this on the commercial market, and if
it eventually does - and is extensible enough it could be perfect for a
low access machine. By extensible I mean to be able to program things
in C, and the like.

It is extremely important to keep the software which our society
depends to be open source (preferably GPL-style free to keep it that
way) and transparent. Otherwise in 100 years we will not have the
knowledge to necessarily access information just a few decades old or
less.

[xerxes...@gmail.com]

I agree!

Not only will it create a platform, it will move the world!
I believe this machine will create a new creative demo scene movement
in the development countries!

When the C64 was introduced and mass produced in Europe the youth
embraced this "out-of-the-box" machine from the start since it enabled
them to express their ideas in digital form.

Since the middle of 1980 young people started to create computer
programs for fun and it turned out to be a community of youths learning
to program by their own; competing with each others what the hardware
could express. I believe a similar root movement will happen with the
launch of this green-machine! Suddenly we will see new kind of art
expressed in ways never to be found in western cultures.

I would like to see this green machine running smalltalk for i believe
smalltalk is self documented enough for people to learn and expand over
time. And my guess it will make youths appreciate object oriented
programming too!

References to the demoscene can be found in this FAQ:
http://tomaes.32x.de/text/faq.php

[Jeffrey Drake]

I don't know if the use of any specific language is a great idea,
consider that many of these children will not likely speak english very
much if at all. Programming languages are extremely baised towards
english.

If smalltalk is anything like objective-c than it is very verbose in
english terms.

If you take a language such as scheme or lisp, using UTF-8 you could
create procedures that make sense name-wise in their native language.

Of course you need something to base all of this on, which is usually
going to be C. But any language implementation that supports multiple
languages, and perhaps a dictionary style approach - where in UI
strings are replaced based on files think of this sort of arrangement
for an if statement:

if (english), si (french, spanish), wenn (german), se (italian), 如果
(chinese simplified), etc.

All the above were roughly done using a language translator of the
english word.

Could something like this work?

[Xerxes Rånby]

I guess you have to give the idea to the kids in question and see how
they use the tools before we jump to conclusions what will work or not.

Personally I believe these kids will learn how to program small
programs before they even know how to read and write! The reason behind
these worlds is from personal experience. I was introduced to a
Canon-X07 computer with built in basic and connected to a plotter. My
older brother made a small basic program that increased a variable and
print it, something like:

0 I=0
10 I=I+1
20 PRINT I
30 GOTO 10
RUN

Fore me this simple program thought me how digits worked! I could
simply watch the output of this program and see how the first digits in
the number expanded rapidly, then overflow and increased the second
column of digits and so on. The computer was slow enough for making the
number output observable.

One of my own first programming steps was to poke in one line and see
the result:
Fumbling on the keys and writing code like:

PRINT 10 <enter>
10

RINT SADJKK <enter>
ERROR

LPRINT 10 <enter>

"wow"!
This made the plotter connected to the X07 print the number 10 in ink
on paper! This was a powerful experience since it made me able to for
the first time to recognise a pattern and make use of it.

My natural choice was to replace the PRINT in my brothers code with
LPRINT and well then the plotter ran out of paper :)

Then i started to copy all basic examples i could find letter for
letter into the machine and got more and more amazed (some year later).
Cant say i did understand all the commands but it made it at least
possible for my to test code other people had written by my own.

What i would like to demonstrate with this self experience story is
that even if I was from Sweden and did not even know English i could
still learn some how how to program. Even without a trained teacher and
enjoyed it :)

Actually i hated when my brother tried to explain all things since he
kept it too abstract for me to understand.

I guess people like Alan Kay have better understanding than me how kids
best learn how to program computers while playing. For myself i am just
one of those kids lucky to be get my hands on a computer while 3 years
old in the year of 1983! :)

[Jeffrey Drake]

Tandy 1000SL in 1989, GWBASIC was it. No harddrive, a single 360k DD
5.25" and 384k ram. Dos 3.3 :-)

Basic is damaging to the brain, I have been recovering ever since.