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Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

    Apple with the iPad and iPhone goes even further and does 
    not allow children to download an Etoy made by another 
    child somewhere in the world.

Kids can publish native apps if they want to, there are plenty of examples around. But regardless, you can share anything over the web. What about Android? Does it "not allow children to download etoys" too? This is pure vitriol.

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I'm not sure what an "etoy" is, but I imagine it's essentially a program and associated source code (e.g. so that you can learn from it). iOS bans, for no reason, compilers or interpretors. Android allows for these. The majority of children will not be publishing native apps.

Check this out...

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171 https://github.com/TwoLivesLeft/Codea-Runtime

You can't export or import your code there, you can only type it in. (Unless something's changed lately.) Even micros in the 70s could save/load cassette tape.

(Codea is pretty neat anyway. I get sad to see the potential locked up.)

If we're talking about getting a kids to learn how to use these wonderful tools, that's a feature, not a bug. I for one know that I learned to program precisely because I couldn't just swap cassettes with the other kids. I had a crappy computer that no one else had, so the only games I had were the ones I typed in myself. That act of typing (and hence reading) the source code was how I learned to program.

This is neither a feature nor a bug. It's a restriction forced by Apple.

Is an evolution of the Smalltalk environment tailored for children.

There's a Squeak for Android. In iOS you're forbidden to run any programs except through the blessed interpreters (the app store and webkit). I'm sure you know this.

Added: "if we wanted to get Squeak itself into the App Store we would have to cripple it." -- http://forum.world.st/Squeak-VM-for-iPad-Current-progress-td...

We should be doing this stuff in the browser, where it's unregulated

I wonder how he proposes to verify the Etoy was made by a child and not harmful or containing "scary" content?

It all was an amazing vision, but the problem is link bait headlines, spammers, and politicians who run committees. In a world where someone had to write a "penis detector", the visions loses some of its shine.

hm, does the iphone/ipad (as they are today) prevent people from being victim of link baits, spam, and stuff like that?

If not... I don't see your point.

The web part of any device is at the mercy of the world, but apps are patrolled for that stuff and Etoys would be an app.

Compared with what Smalltalk allows as development environment, iOS is very far away from the original idea from Alan Kay.

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