Sugar just conjures up all sorts of negative connotations these days, especially if you are a parent. Like, as a parent, I see one of my major tasks in life as preparing my kid to enter a world where sugar (and lots of other forms of unhealthy but pleasurable things) are much more ubiquitous than the environment in which their basic intuitions about behavior evolved. One other area beyond literal physical sugar where this is true is technology, where a huge part of the ecosystem is actively predatory on children's time and attention. So the combination of "Sugar" as a name and something vaguely related to tech just gives bad vibes all around.
I've tried Sugar out and I frankly find it somewhat condescending to children. Kid's don't need to be manipulated into using computers. They like them already and can readily appreciate that they are both fun and powerful. Rather than present to them a dumbed down interface we should be empowering them to use computers as they are, and conditioning them to expect that the computer itself be accessible to them, not hidden behind a fancy UI. When my kid was barely able to read I was showing him how to edit code and observe how it changes the behavior of characters in a game. He got it. We don't need goofy simplified user interfaces.
I've tried Sugar out and I frankly find it somewhat condescending to children. Kid's don't need to be manipulated into using computers. They like them already and can readily appreciate that they are both fun and powerful. Rather than present to them a dumbed down interface we should be empowering them to use computers as they are, and conditioning them to expect that the computer itself be accessible to them, not hidden behind a fancy UI. When my kid was barely able to read I was showing him how to edit code and observe how it changes the behavior of characters in a game. He got it. We don't need goofy simplified user interfaces.