Methodological Foundations for Designing Intelligent Computer-Based Training

摘要

Sherlock I was written in Xerox Lisp, using an object-oriented programming toolcalled Loops. When we began planning Sherlock II, it was already clear that the specialized hardware environments needed for the first generation of cognitive technology tools was beginning to pose serious barriers to the diffusion of the ideas in those tools. We decided that we would do future development work on standard workstation platforms with broad presence in the commercial world. The Air Force Desktop contract series ended up determining our hardware choice, which was to use DOS machines with significant extended memory (memory clearly becoming a cheap commodity and is not a barrier to the diffusion of our ideas). The decision to use Smalltalk for our work was based upon a desire to preserve the power of the object-based approach that was permitted by Loops, but in a more standard environment.