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Negroponte on OLPC's commitment to SugarNegroponte on OLPC's commitment to SugarPosted Apr 23, 2008 20:34 UTC (Wed) by schwaang (guest, #19827)Parent article: Negroponte on OLPC's commitment to Sugar
I haven't yet seen a thoughtful analysis of what is "wrong" with the current XO+software. It seems clear that things aren't going as well as had been hoped, but is WindowsXP-Lite the answer to any of the problems? My own experience with the XO as a G1G1 donor (and prospective FOSS developer) is that Sugar needs a lot of polish under the direction of a benevolent dictator who can herd the cats in the right direction, with lots of input from actual educators and educatees. Windows makes no impact there. Maybe in some countries sales of the XO would increase if Windows were available. But for OLPC to stay true to its mission, it *must* support sugar. Is sales competition the issue, or just what issues are being addressed by this move at OLPC, in Negroponte's own opinion I wonder?
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Negroponte on OLPC's commitment to Sugar Posted Apr 24, 2008 3:52 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] > it *must* support sugar. Why? I own a G1G1 too. I love the hardware but I find Sugar to be fairly unusable. It's outrageously slow, funky, inconsistent, limited, and ugly. It makes for an OK demo but, if the six months are any indication, it's going to take years for it to become a good, solid, useful front-end. Why didn't the OLPC guys adapt more existing software rather than writing so much from scratch? And why are they so Python-centric? A Telepathy+XFCE+Webkit front-end would probably be fairly doable. The mobile phone guys have been doing cool things; follow their leads. Given the huge delays and limited functionality, it seems pretty clear that they bit off a lot more than they can chew. And unless 20 programmers suddenly materialize to work full-time on it, I don't see things getting better any time soon. It breaks the heart. Said from the snidelines, of course. I'm just an interested observer.
Negroponte on OLPC's commitment to Sugar Posted Apr 24, 2008 19:18 UTC (Thu) by schwaang (guest, #19827) [Link] I don't disagree that Sugar is limited at this point, and there is a lot of unrealized potential. Its lack of polish and clunkiness was my biggest disappointment with the XO when I got my G1G1. I'm starting to appreciate its possibilities more and more. The reason they must support Sugar, IMHO, is that education is the whole point of this project. Anyone *could* develop activities for this system more easily than for Windows (without Sugar), and a kid really can program in Python. The whole system is laid bare. In any case, the choice of software stacks isn't the fundamental problem, I think the effort must have been under-funded and, as I said, maybe needed more focus to its effort to get the thing polished for the needs of its end-users. (I.e. "Benevolent dictator with usability input for educators and educatees"). >And unless 20 programmers suddenly materialize to work full-time on it, I don't see things getting better any time soon. Lots of programmers (like myself) only just got their XOs in the last few weeks via G1G1. If I can find a way to contribute I'll gladly do it. But I'm a little disconcerted to see the Sugar folks admirably charging forward without the kind of managerial direction and user feedback that success demands. With a Steve Jobs laser-like focus yoking effort to vision, Sugar could rock. But then, I'm also just yapping from the "sidelines" at this point ;) There is one other thing I've come to realize about the XO. In the absence of an XO-centered curriculum, there's a limit to what any child is likely to accomplish with one out-of-the-box. But in the presence of such a curriculum (given the needed activities), today's Sugar isn't going to be an impediment to the learning mission. So it comes down to how they get deployed, and whether the adopting country organizations are able to stuff some locally useful activities on them that allow teachers to teach and children to learn.
Negroponte on OLPC's commitment to Sugar Posted Apr 25, 2008 18:31 UTC (Fri) by amk (subscriber, #19) [Link] Last month I went to an OLPC meetup and helped someone who wanted to modify the Record activity on their OLPC. Using Python for Sugar activities doesn't mean students will be editing the software on their machines, because the code is still complicated. Activities are GTk+ applications, so you need to know about the GTk+ signals-and-slots mechanism, what widgets are available and their properties, etc. plus a collection of Sugar-specific modules. Python is better than C for this, but modifying activities will still be pretty hard, out of reach for all but the most determined students (and many adults!).
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