[Edu-sig] The best way to predict the future...

[Arthur]

kirby urner wrote:

> On 7/10/06, Arthur <ajsiegel at optonline.net> wrote:
>
>> What I seem to have gotten wrong is the fact that giving forum to those
>> ideas; praise, implicit and explicit of those ideas; encouragement to
>> the Python community to embrace those ideas is what is relevant.
>> Critique of those ideas, encouragement of the Python community to resist
>> them and to work to create a viable alternative to them  is what is  
>> not.
>>
>> My bad.
>
>
> I couldn't sort out the convolutions in the above paragraph.  What
> about Alan Kay again?

Actually the comment is more a reference to Guido than Alan Kay.  If you 
read his blog entry about the Kay keynote, he seems to be struggling to 
find some reason why an implementation of Kay's ideas as to children, in 
a language other than the one Kay designed as the platform for the 
implementation of those ideas makes some kind of technical sense.  And 
has to quickly back off his stab at it. 

Kay on the other hand is quick to correct Guido and has nothing to say 
about Python, other than referencing what Squeak can do that Python 
can't..And it would indeed be an insult to Kay to think that another 
language, by some kind of happenstance, would make be a better platform  
then the one he designed for the purposes to which he has devoted it.

I think that Kay should in fact be respected *as an explorer*.  My 
problem is that he has spent all his time in an industry in which 
explorations are promoted as *discoveries* as a matter of course, and 
the goal is to be on the scene of the Next Big Thing (or 100 million 
little ones).  Is he Larry Ellison or Mother Theresa?.

The fact that he points Guido to "best practices" is a tell.

I've been around enough to know the term well,  and understand the 
context  in which it is usually  used. Usually having mostly to do with 
getting folks in line and on board and moving in the same direction when 
working in a field fraught with unknowns, confusions and a thousand 
potential ways to go. If it has anything to do with "best", it is 
usually best guess. 

Personally I find the "best practices" of the IT industry more than 
irrelevant where the subject is children and education.

My definition of "best practices" when it comes to this arena, and at 
this stage of thing, is to emphasize what we *don't know*, what we 
*can't* access in any meaningful way, in what way one's own world view, 
and one's own interests, might be influencing what one is seeing when 
one looks. It is in this regard that I think Kay is clearly *not* best 
practices, and getting in line behind him is exactly the wrong thing to do.

But Kay  can't miss the *energy* around the phenomena of Python. He 
wants a piece of that energy.  Without undertaking the adjustment to his 
ideas that understanding what the source of it might be.  He seems to me 
a cake and eat it kind of guy.

I think I am being a Python stalwart in my attitude toward these 
issues.  But suspect Guido disagrees..

Guido, I mean no harm.

Art