NAMIN-XO

Squeak images are application bundles that run inside the Squeak VM. Since Squeak is written in Squeak, the Squeak IDE just comes as one of those images, and there are lots to choose from.

• For Squeak development, I prefer Damien Cassou’s squeak-dev image.
• For Etoys programming, I prefer to simply use the user image which corresponds to the actual Etoys Activity on the XO laptop. Eventually, it will be interesting to play with the corresponding developer image as well.
• The book, Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots, has its own environment BotsInc which comes as an image. (I mention it because I am interested in checking out this book, eventually.)

Out of curiosity, I placed a Give 1 Get 1 order on a whim, without really knowing what to expect. Overall, I am pleasantly surprised - not so much by the product itself (for example, the default web browser is decidedly mediocre), but rather by its potential of creating a spirit of tinkering in an entire generation of children. The educational software put on this little machine is great: music composition tools for various ages and technical aspirations, and programming “for kids” like Turtle Art and Etoys. What I like about Etoys is the blurring between running, debugging and editing: you do a bit of all these at once, so much that these concepts don’t really make sense separately (see the Squeaky Tales videos for a demonstration of this way of programming). And when I discovered that this run-stop-edit-as-you-like feature comes from Etoys’ underlying platform, Squeak, I was hooked. I am also blown away by how easy it is to create a UI application in Squeak (see the second chapter of Squeak by Example for an example).