Subject:
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Re: Limitations in RCX language
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Mon, 4 Jan 1999 22:27:37 GMT
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Original-From:
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David Warnock <david@sundayta#StopSpam#.co.uk>
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Viewed:
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1862 times
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Bruce,
> Okay, I'm not nuts. But why haven't I found any other complaints • about this?
> Nothing in the FAQ or any newsgroups. I fully expected adults to • want to move
> beyond the interface, and to be capable of it, but what about kids? • Are there
> just not that many children with LMS so far? I was really excited • about getting
> my kids' hands on some programming, but it's a bad situation when • an 11-year-old
> can bump into a wall on her first day.
For what it's worth I agree totally. The Mindstorm programming
environment is too weak. I put a message up on their web site forum
detailing some of my problems that I found with my 6 (nearly 7 year
old).
For example I cannot see why they designed a user interface for
Windows 95 and later that is fixed at 640x480 resolution. I would have
thought that most win 95 boxes are running at 800x600 or 1024x768
these days. We actually use a 21" screen at 1600x1200 and Mindstorms
looks silly.
Also our kids are used to a standard mouse usage for drag and drop -
all their games use that. So why does mindstorms have to be different?
At least standard behaviour should be an option.
I do like the right click to turn over blocks but the user interface
for typing in numbers (eg wait delay times) is wierd, it's not clear
when yoiu can type the number.
Then again why oh why are we forced to 8 character filenames on a
32bit only application.
Like you I really hope for a major improvement in the next version,
because this has a lot of the things right and it's not soo much to
make it really powerful (like an advanced set of blocks with variables
etc). The nesting could be easily dealt with by forcing use of
MyCommands, as for limits of 14 blocks in a stack it is crazy.
We also got very confused when a stack of a second sensor started
executing before the first finished. As you said there is no
documentation about this. We have reduced the problem by always
setting directions explicitly rather than using reverse direction.
I had never planned to use the Mindstorm software myself but like you
I will have to look for something better for the kids before very long
(as they are so much younger I have a bit more time for lego to get it
right).
Dave
David Warnock
Sundayta Ltd
--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Limitations in RCX language
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| Maybe I'm nuts. There seem to be some limitations in this RIS system.... My daughter (11) and I immediately ran into a 15-block limit in the RCX coding environment. On further inspection, we find we can extend this using My Commands, Sensor Watchers (...) (26 years ago, 3-Jan-99, to lugnet.robotics, lugnet.loc.us.ca.cva)
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