Subject:
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Re: RCX & RIS, a fading glory?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Wed, 5 Feb 2003 12:12:20 GMT
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Original-From:
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PeterBalch <peterbalch@compuserve.com%IHateSpam%>
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Viewed:
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787 times
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Kyle
> You mean 'plug and pray' don't you?? ;)
I used to think that but I've been pleasantly surprised by XP. Or, more
likely, I've just been lucky so far.
> it would be tough for LEGO to be able to modify the current
> graphical programming
> environment to work in such an open ended system without forcing
> the kids to learn about things like Unique identifiers, and virtual
> device name mappings.
Yes, I agree. And I'd love to know what the answer is.
Doesn't it come with the territory? If you have an "unlimited" number of
motors or sensors, then what's the alternative?
> what if I'm an 8yr old who built a cool robot
> and programmed it at home and brought it to my friends house and we
> want to reprogram it?
I guess you'd have to remember to bring your program on a floppy.
The mindstorms system allows you to turn on a motor manually to see what it
does. Mapping the motors to the friendly names is similar.
> the
> problems LEGO would have to overcome to feel comfortable marketing
> a product like this to children.
It looks like Lego no longer do feel comfortable marketing a product like
this.
There are 8yr old children and there are nerds and geeks like us. Maybe the
two markets don't overlap much. I'be been selling a very cheap robot kit
locally for the past few months and have shifted 200 of them with next to
no marketing effort. I know that both retailers that I use have sold a
couple of dozen of my kits for each Mindstorms that they sell. I've just
moved into the "nerds and geeks" mail order market (with the same kit for
8yr olds!) and sales seem to be OK. I'll have to see how it goes.
> a graphical language can have the power of a textual one.
> I'm not sure that if it did, it would still be as useful to beginners
> though. power almost always brings at least some complexity.
That's the problem Logo was meant to solve. I don't have enough experience
of Logo to be able to comment on whether it did.
Peter
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: RCX & RIS, a fading glory?
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| (...) Yes, I'm scared that this might be true also. Unfortunately, I think (though I have no evidence) that LEGO sees lack of interest by kids as 'kids think it's too complicated or too hard to use' whereas I think that many of the kids that this (...) (22 years ago, 5-Feb-03, to lugnet.robotics)
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