7 ms·

import turtle t = turtle.Turtle() t.circle(100)

by gnud 8y ago

bartread 8y ago
My recollection is hazy, as I didn't use it much, but this struck me immediately as somewhat similar to LOGO back in the 80s.
AlexeyBrin 8y ago
OK, so I'm seven years old, I take your code and write it in my Jupyter notebook. Press run and I get half a page of errors with something about TclError: no display name and no $DISPLAY environment variable. I also have questions: What is import ? Why do you need to write turtle 3 times ? Why do I have to write t.circle ? This is boring, I better play Candy Crush on my phone. Compare your code with the QBasic equivalent: screen 13 circle (50, 50), 100 Another nice thing about QBasic is that the code is checked after each line and in case of error it shows you a clear error message.
- justinator 8y ago
  OK so I'm 7 years old. My parents are my parents, so I've got constraints you would give a child who sometimes wets the bed and can't always put all their own clothes on. I've got a bunch of paper and crayons. See you in a couple of hours, cause I'm just gonna draw. (or is childhood that different, now?)
  - meheleventyone 8y ago
    Urrm, seven is quite old in respect to doing something like programming. I was writing (quite rubbish) BASIC on the ZX Spectrum at that age in the late 80's. No easy error messages and a single book to help. My own four year old no longer wets the bed and can easily dress herself when she can be convinced too.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      1 in 10 children still wet the bad at age 7.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > 1 in 10 children still wet the bad at age 7. Which mean 9 in 10 don't. Not that, in any case, wetting the bed is actually in any way anything but a distraction in this discussion.
  - oldcynic 8y ago
    At under 7 years old my daughter was doing surprisingly fancy things in MS paint. Including finding features we didn't even know Paint had. "Daaaaaaad, crayons are boring, can I use the computer?" (I think there's a few minor differences) :)
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    It was (for some people) that different 20 years ago, at least from what I remember from my own childhood.
    - justinator 8y ago
      I was 7, 30 years ago. We wouldn't have a computer in the house for another 10 years. Owning a personal computer in the 80's wasn't given, even in the middle class white Connecticut suburban neighborhood I grew up in. I was introduced to Logo at school maybe not at seven, but maybe 11? Looking back, I would have given anything to just have more play time where I made up the rules, and those rules weren't called "rules" (because that's what playing is, right?) As an adult, I find that I'm not playing by making computer programs, but by going into the woods, and pretending I'm basically a kid and exploring and getting a bit caught up in my own imagination. It's... it's lovely.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    I was 7 years old in 1980. I only wasn't using a computer yet because I had another year before I got into fourth grade where thet had a class computer (a Commodore PET), and I was programming a computer at home (a Timex/Sinclair 1000) a year after that, and a PC another couple years later. And none of that was particularly outstanding for my peer group, except some of their families got Apple or Atari computers instead of PCs.
  - megaman22 8y ago
    Many seven year old children I know cannot even read at that age, let alone write computer programs. Most of them have the deck stacked against them in ways that most HN members or their offspring never will, but it's important not to lose sight of the struggles that average and below-average people face.
- gnud 8y ago
  What does 'screen 13' mean? Why must I have parenthesis around 50, 50? Also, I doubt many 7 year olds have a Jupyter notebook they refer to as "mine".
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >What does 'screen 13' mean? Why must I have parenthesis around 50, 50? See? Way fewer questions than with Python or JS. >Also, I doubt many 7 year olds have a Jupyter notebook they refer to as "mine". That only reinforces what the parent said.
  - itomato 8y ago
    "Look it up in your book, 101 Things To Do With Your Personal Computer"
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    I believe with BASICA or GW-BASIC one wouldn't even need SCREEN 13 I know I started with the ZX Spectrum and I didn't need it. As for the parenthesis, I was content with being told that's just how you make a circle
  - badsectoracula 8y ago
    > Why must I have parenthesis around 50, 50? Hey, i remember that! I was actually 7 years old when i first encountered the `CIRCLE (xcenter, ycenter), radius` statement (in GWBasic, but it is the same in QBasic) and... it actually made sense to have the coordinates separate. Although probably a large reason it "made sense" was that i wasn't familiar with any other notation. I quickly jumped to Turbo Pascal and i remember the `Circle` procedure in Turbo Pascal (BGI) looking weird with it being `Circle(xcenter, ycenter, radius);` :-P. I do not really remember much from that time (it has been almost three decades since then :-P), but this is something i sometimes think back to because of how each statement had a "customized" syntax that i found making sense (e.g. GW/QBasic has `LINE (x1,y1)-(x2,y2)` and this also made sense because i'm drawing a line between two points and again Turbo Pascal's `Line(x1, y1, x2, y2);` felt weird initially) and this sort of statement-specific syntax being something you do not really see in languages nowadays (or even at the time, AFAIK most other BASICs used `LINE x1,y1,x2,y2` - when they offered graphics functionality at all).
- qznc 8y ago
  With DrRacket it is #lang slideshow (circle 10) Explanation: http://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/index.html http://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/index.html
  - AlexeyBrin 8y ago
    I really like Racket, but I still think Basic is simpler to click for a kid.
digi_owl 8y ago
> import turtle That to me is the ongoing problem with picking up a programming language these days, figuring out all the available libraries and which of them i need to load to get closer to my goal.

import turtle t = turtle.Turtle() t.circle(100)

by gnud 8y ago

import turtle t = turtle.Turtle() t.circle(100)

My recollection is hazy, as I didn't use it much, but this struck me immediately as somewhat similar to LOGO back in the 80s.

AlexeyBrin 8y ago

OK, so I'm seven years old, I take your code and write it in my Jupyter notebook. Press run and I get half a page of errors with something about TclError: no display name and no $DISPLAY environment variable. I also have questions: What is import ? Why do you need to write turtle 3 times ? Why do I have to write t.circle ? This is boring, I better play Candy Crush on my phone. Compare your code with the QBasic equivalent: screen 13 circle (50, 50), 100 Another nice thing about QBasic is that the code is checked after each line and in case of error it shows you a clear error message.

justinator 8y ago
OK so I'm 7 years old. My parents are my parents, so I've got constraints you would give a child who sometimes wets the bed and can't always put all their own clothes on. I've got a bunch of paper and crayons. See you in a couple of hours, cause I'm just gonna draw. (or is childhood that different, now?)
- meheleventyone 8y ago
  Urrm, seven is quite old in respect to doing something like programming. I was writing (quite rubbish) BASIC on the ZX Spectrum at that age in the late 80's. No easy error messages and a single book to help. My own four year old no longer wets the bed and can easily dress herself when she can be convinced too.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    1 in 10 children still wet the bad at age 7.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > 1 in 10 children still wet the bad at age 7. Which mean 9 in 10 don't. Not that, in any case, wetting the bed is actually in any way anything but a distraction in this discussion.
- oldcynic 8y ago
  At under 7 years old my daughter was doing surprisingly fancy things in MS paint. Including finding features we didn't even know Paint had. "Daaaaaaad, crayons are boring, can I use the computer?" (I think there's a few minor differences) :)
- TomMarius 8y ago
  It was (for some people) that different 20 years ago, at least from what I remember from my own childhood.
  - justinator 8y ago
    I was 7, 30 years ago. We wouldn't have a computer in the house for another 10 years. Owning a personal computer in the 80's wasn't given, even in the middle class white Connecticut suburban neighborhood I grew up in. I was introduced to Logo at school maybe not at seven, but maybe 11? Looking back, I would have given anything to just have more play time where I made up the rules, and those rules weren't called "rules" (because that's what playing is, right?) As an adult, I find that I'm not playing by making computer programs, but by going into the woods, and pretending I'm basically a kid and exploring and getting a bit caught up in my own imagination. It's... it's lovely.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  I was 7 years old in 1980. I only wasn't using a computer yet because I had another year before I got into fourth grade where thet had a class computer (a Commodore PET), and I was programming a computer at home (a Timex/Sinclair 1000) a year after that, and a PC another couple years later. And none of that was particularly outstanding for my peer group, except some of their families got Apple or Atari computers instead of PCs.
- megaman22 8y ago
  Many seven year old children I know cannot even read at that age, let alone write computer programs. Most of them have the deck stacked against them in ways that most HN members or their offspring never will, but it's important not to lose sight of the struggles that average and below-average people face.
gnud 8y ago
What does 'screen 13' mean? Why must I have parenthesis around 50, 50? Also, I doubt many 7 year olds have a Jupyter notebook they refer to as "mine".
- coldtea 8y ago
  >What does 'screen 13' mean? Why must I have parenthesis around 50, 50? See? Way fewer questions than with Python or JS. >Also, I doubt many 7 year olds have a Jupyter notebook they refer to as "mine". That only reinforces what the parent said.
- itomato 8y ago
  "Look it up in your book, 101 Things To Do With Your Personal Computer"
- BeetleB 8y ago
  I believe with BASICA or GW-BASIC one wouldn't even need SCREEN 13 I know I started with the ZX Spectrum and I didn't need it. As for the parenthesis, I was content with being told that's just how you make a circle
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  > Why must I have parenthesis around 50, 50? Hey, i remember that! I was actually 7 years old when i first encountered the `CIRCLE (xcenter, ycenter), radius` statement (in GWBasic, but it is the same in QBasic) and... it actually made sense to have the coordinates separate. Although probably a large reason it "made sense" was that i wasn't familiar with any other notation. I quickly jumped to Turbo Pascal and i remember the `Circle` procedure in Turbo Pascal (BGI) looking weird with it being `Circle(xcenter, ycenter, radius);` :-P. I do not really remember much from that time (it has been almost three decades since then :-P), but this is something i sometimes think back to because of how each statement had a "customized" syntax that i found making sense (e.g. GW/QBasic has `LINE (x1,y1)-(x2,y2)` and this also made sense because i'm drawing a line between two points and again Turbo Pascal's `Line(x1, y1, x2, y2);` felt weird initially) and this sort of statement-specific syntax being something you do not really see in languages nowadays (or even at the time, AFAIK most other BASICs used `LINE x1,y1,x2,y2` - when they offered graphics functionality at all).
qznc 8y ago
With DrRacket it is #lang slideshow (circle 10) Explanation: http://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/index.html http://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/index.html
- AlexeyBrin 8y ago
  I really like Racket, but I still think Basic is simpler to click for a kid.

digi_owl 8y ago

> import turtle That to me is the ongoing problem with picking up a programming language these days, figuring out all the available libraries and which of them i need to load to get closer to my goal.