[Edu-sig] I've just started reading this paper

[John Maxwell]

That is, Re: Kelleher and Pausch's Lowering the Barriers to  
Programming, ACM Computing Surveys  37(2)

Here's a comment off the top, and apart from the more obvious issue  
for the edu-sig group (namely, Python's near-complete absence): the  
"taxonomy" is completely ahistorical; they seem to have set up 60+  
programming environments next to one another and considered them all  
at face value, with no particular consideration for the time and  
context from which each emerged (we're talking a 45-year span here).  
The two exceptions to this are the repeated reference to a god-given,  
eternal "logo turtle", and a chart which tracks the "influences" of  
various systems on one another, but only by simple bibliometrics.

I'm working on a comprehensive history of the Smalltalk/Squeak  
'tradition' so this facet pops out at me immediately, as there are a  
half-dozen or more Smalltalk-derived systems listed here, though  
you'd never know it from the article.

My 2 cents. What do you folk think of this?

  - John Maxwell
    jmax at sfu.ca