Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is $60; I don't think it's correct to add the DLC price to that.
Also Deluxe is improved in a number of ways: new characters, new battle mode with 8 new courses, two items at once, smart steering, etc. And it supports 12 players in LAN mode (though MK World supports up to 24!)
Super Smash Bros Ultimate is also significantly improved vs. its Wii U incarnation (its roster includes basically every character from the series - hence "ultimate"), and is also $60 (though DLC will almost double that if you want everything.)
They are both fantastic games that you can basically play forever. The Wii U games were also great - but the Switch versions are even better.
Historically Nintendo game cartridges were expensive than disc-based games for PlayStation etc., but these game cards at least are still $60 - same price as the Wii U disc versions (and the Wii U game prices are equivalent to $84+ in 2026 dollars.)
Nintendo's deal is that the consoles are platforms for their outstanding games, and first-party exclusives are the biggest reason to buy a Nintendo console (though they are also great handheld systems and support local multiplayer gaming without an internet connection.)
If only we could somehow share libraries and configuration files across apps rather than duplicating them and having to update them for every app individually.
We could call it a "shared library" system and an "operating" system. Someone should really invent this.
I mean, even docker could maybe use a shared base image or something right? ;-)
Now make it immutable and layered, like Docker images, and you might be onto something... Ah well, sounds too good to be true. We might have to nix the idea.
I don't understand why Pharo doesn't proudly acknowledge that it is a version of Smalltalk on its landing page, rather than this lukewarm statement on its About page:
> A dynamic, pure, reflective object-oriented programming language in the tradition of Smalltalk
Why not call it a modern Smalltalk, which seems to be what it is?
Smalltalk is a great language and its ecosystem deserves to grow.
Squeak, Cuis and Pharo all use the same VM. So don't tell me Pharo compiles Java, BASIC or something other than Smalltalk! Calling Pharo "not Smalltalk" is pure stupidity and/or marketing, nothing else...
The "tradition of Smalltalk" is to experiment and exceed what came before. Alan Kay expressed disappointment about the ossification of Smalltalk upon the release of Smalltalk 80. Pharo and Squeak are trying to carry forward only the tradition of the original Smalltalk to produce new ideas, not "be a Smalltalk" (whatever that means).
If you say "Pharo is a Smalltalk" then you might get some of the religious elite come and claim "Thou must change this aspect of the system! For it is in violation of the law of Smalltalk as handed down to our forefathers in Smalltalk 80". Pharo is its own system, heavily inspired by Smalltalk to the extent that non-language lawyers look at it and say "it's Smalltalk".
People argue about whether Janet or Clojure are lisps. Some people say that only Common Lisp is Lisp. Some include Scheme as well. But the unqualified "Lisp" usually means Common Lisp when referring to an actual language with an actual specification that you can find an actual compiler to create binaries with. Pharo is a Smalltalk in a similar way to how Scheme is a Lisp. Different enough that saying "Scheme" means something different from "Lisp" to everyone who knows enough to know what you're talking about.
Alan Kay: A couple of years ago, we started this project called Squeak, which is simply not an attempt to give the world a free Smalltalk, but an attempt to give the world a bootstrapping mechanism for something much better than Smalltalk, and when you fool around Squeak, please, please, think of it from that standpoint.
Homework grades are supposed to provide feedback and some incentive to do the work.
However, counting homework grades toward course credit also creates an incentive to cheat. It probably makes sense to remove (or at least drastically reduce) that incentive.
Apprenticeship is a good model. The tutorial system also seems to work at some universities.
Personally I have found well-organized, clearly presented university courses to be great ways to learn the material. The combination of readings, textbooks, lectures, tutorial sessions, writing, labs, problem sets, course projects, etc. has been effective for me. Good textbooks and online resources have also been very helpful. Obviously it only works if you actually do the work yourself.
You're not wrong about grading being largely a numerical ranking system for resource allocation - with minimal effort from the allocator.
Even in the age of AI, I think I still prefer a portfolio system where you accumulate a body of work that you can present and defend in an interview for a job or graduate school position. Unfortunately diligent portfolio assessment can be a lot of work when there are hundreds of applicants for a single slot, so the first stage is usually reviewing a summary or list of work rather than the work itself, and that system can be gamed.
In any case, personalized feedback for student work is still very useful, and it may be more beneficial if it is focused on helping students individually rather than ranking them or sorting them into bins.
Without some sort of pre- and post-assessment, it can be hard to determine whether students actually learned anything in a course. The question is: how do you use that information? I think it should primarily be used as feedback to the students and the instructors, with the aim of improving learning.
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