[Edu-sig] The Educational Robotics Platform

[Stephen R. Figgins]

Thanks for the reply, Steve.   I wondered about Jython on leJos as
well.  Think I will ask about it on the Jython list. 

Let me see if I understand you correctly.  JavaVM fits in smaller places
than Python because it was written tight from the start.  uController's
are often very small memory systems, 64k maybe.  So you're VM (and with
Python we use this term very loosely) has to fit in about 32k or less.  
Getting down that small is essential if you want to have a robot
price-tag of $100 or under - which would be, in your opinion, the
threshold to broadly introducing robots in the classroom. 

Because Python was not written with such small memory environments in
mind, it is hard to retrofit it.  You end up trying to rewrite the core
so you can leave out things.  (Pippy for example can get down to about
70k, if you chuck the parser/compiler, floating point, and some other
stuff.)  You doubt that Python can get down to the 32k requirements to
fit it on the cheap uProcessors.  

Stephen