OLPC

[Owen Densmore]

In our earlier thread on scripting languages, I had forgotten about  
the OLPC XO.  I saw this TED post:
   http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/nicholas_negroponte_takes_olpc_to_colombia.html
.. and started to wonder what *its* language of choice might be.  I  
think its smalltalk and python, but not sure.

Which leads me to: do any of us keep up with the OLPC program  
nowadays?  I've never "got it", but I have a grandson who might be  
able to teach me.  How can I help my grandson to get started?

My perception was that the OLPC had sorta lost steam here in the US/
Europe but I'm not sure.  Any OLPC'ers in FRIAM?  If so, clue us in,  
please!

     -- Owen



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[Roger Critchlow-2]

John Lennon's keeping up on it:

   http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/28/john-lennon-eerily-returns-to-push-olpc-cause/

-- rec --

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[Dale Schumacher]

Do you count FORTH as a scripting language?  It's interactive,
dynamically scoped, imperative and stack-based.  The XO has made great
use of FORTH as the basis for it's Firmware and boot loader.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/FORTH

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Dale Schumacher wrote:
> Do you count FORTH as a scripting language?  It's interactive,
> dynamically scoped, imperative and stack-based.
And one of the few languages that can be used for performance-sensitive,
footprint-limited applications (e.g. systems programming, graphics).  
PostScript of course is a sibling of FORTH.  There are also modern
functional elaborations like Factor, Cat, and Joy.

But I think one of the characteristics of scripting languages, for
better or worse, is that they go out of their way to make it easy for
the user to flounder around in `familiar' ways and come to something
that works.   FORTH takes some thought  because one needs to come up
with idioms to avoid confusion about where things are on the stack.  
Most folks, I think, would tend to see FORTH programming like high level
assembly or like programming the JVM directly in bytecode.

Marcus




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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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