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> "The LOGO system supports two different (by no means disjoint) environments: the Turtle, Graphics and Musicbox world (ie: peripheral devices which are control

by bmitc 4y ago

> "The LOGO system supports two different (by no means disjoint) environments: the Turtle, Graphics and Musicbox world (ie: peripheral devices which are controlled by a command language) and the LISP world." Whelp, the lack of an Oxford comma there really through me for a loop until I continued reading. Anyway... > "Our experiences, especially with young students, indicate that programming in LOGO may serve as a bridge between natural language communication and reasoning and the formal and abstract symbols and reasoning in mathematics and programming languages." If anyone is interested in this, there are the following books: * Exploring Language with Logo: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262570653 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262570653 * Visual Modeling with Logo: A Structured Approach to Seeing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262530694 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262530694 * Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics: https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0262510375 https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificia... * Computer Science Logo Style: http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html It's disappointing to me that Logo died out and didn't remain around or evolve, and I find it a bit sad that many kids are getting introduced to programming via something like Python or Scratch. I feel there's still space for Logo, and it would be cool to see an easily downloadable and installable version of it.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Scratch was produced at MIT just like Logo and I think it is an evolution of what they were trying to do with Logo.
- bmitc 4y ago
  Despite the heritage of the creators, I personally view Scratch as a misstep. I am a big fan of visual programming, but Scratch is essentially an everyday imperative language with a structured editor and sprites. It doesn't maintain any of the simplicity or elegance of Logo or Lisp, and I'm honestly a bit surprised that the MIT Media Lab invests so much in it.
abecedarius 4y ago
Turtle Geometry is still worth checking out. The value is in working through the ideas, and details of Logo take up very little of the book. (I've only glanced through CS Logo Style and haven't seen the other two.)
- bmitc 4y ago
  I think the same basically goes for any of those books. One could easily port the code to Racket, for example.
  - abecedarius 4y ago
    Yeah. I recommend it because it goes way beyond the stuff another commenter complained about in this thread: > A dozen articles about the language, with listings. The screenshots? All the same, showing recursive pictures of rectangles and circles. Great. LOGO can do that. But what else? Big empty void there. E.g. the last chapter is an intro to general relativity, with a simulator for motion in curved spacetime. (CS Logo Style also covers many topics, but it looked like they were all familiar to me as an experienced programmer. I haven't seen another book for programmers about most of the math in Turtle Geometry.)
dragonwriter 4y ago
> It's disappointing to me that Logo died out and didn't remain around or evolve But it did remain around and evolve. See, e. g.: StarLogo Nova: https://www.slnova.org/ https://www.slnova.org/ NetLogo: https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/
hota_mazi 4y ago
Wasn't it predictable, though? Take a look at that issue of BYTE entirely dedicated to LOGO that was referenced multiple times in this discussion. A dozen articles about the language, with listings. The screenshots? All the same, showing recursive pictures of rectangles and circles. Great. LOGO can do that. But what else? Big empty void there. Contrast that with what BASIC could do at the time... Is it any wonder LOGO died out and BASIC thrived?
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > Contrast that with what BASIC could do at the time... Is it any wonder LOGO died out and BASIC thrived? AIUI, implementations of BASIC on home computers were a lot simpler and more straightforward than LOGO or LISP - for instance, GC in BASIC was an afterthought and only applied to strings. The real competitor to BASIC back then was FORTH.
  - hota_mazi 4y ago
    Mmmh... no. I grew up and learned programming in that era, bought magazines, typed pages and pages of listings. 98% of the listings in these magazines were BASIC, 1% were assembly, and the rest was... well, others. LOGO was a niche language then, and Forth even more so.
- bmitc 4y ago
  What could Basic do over Logo? As a few of the books I posted show, Logo is a very capable language, ignoring turtles. Was Logo in the 80s somehow less capable?
- abecedarius 4y ago
  > Big empty void See my comment upthread about Turtle Geometry.

by bmitc 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago

Scratch was produced at MIT just like Logo and I think it is an evolution of what they were trying to do with Logo.

bmitc 4y ago
Despite the heritage of the creators, I personally view Scratch as a misstep. I am a big fan of visual programming, but Scratch is essentially an everyday imperative language with a structured editor and sprites. It doesn't maintain any of the simplicity or elegance of Logo or Lisp, and I'm honestly a bit surprised that the MIT Media Lab invests so much in it.

abecedarius 4y ago

Turtle Geometry is still worth checking out. The value is in working through the ideas, and details of Logo take up very little of the book. (I've only glanced through CS Logo Style and haven't seen the other two.)

bmitc 4y ago
I think the same basically goes for any of those books. One could easily port the code to Racket, for example.
- abecedarius 4y ago
  Yeah. I recommend it because it goes way beyond the stuff another commenter complained about in this thread: > A dozen articles about the language, with listings. The screenshots? All the same, showing recursive pictures of rectangles and circles. Great. LOGO can do that. But what else? Big empty void there. E.g. the last chapter is an intro to general relativity, with a simulator for motion in curved spacetime. (CS Logo Style also covers many topics, but it looked like they were all familiar to me as an experienced programmer. I haven't seen another book for programmers about most of the math in Turtle Geometry.)

dragonwriter 4y ago

> It's disappointing to me that Logo died out and didn't remain around or evolve But it did remain around and evolve. See, e. g.: StarLogo Nova: https://www.slnova.org/ https://www.slnova.org/ NetLogo: https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

hota_mazi 4y ago

Wasn't it predictable, though? Take a look at that issue of BYTE entirely dedicated to LOGO that was referenced multiple times in this discussion. A dozen articles about the language, with listings. The screenshots? All the same, showing recursive pictures of rectangles and circles. Great. LOGO can do that. But what else? Big empty void there. Contrast that with what BASIC could do at the time... Is it any wonder LOGO died out and BASIC thrived?

zozbot234 4y ago
> Contrast that with what BASIC could do at the time... Is it any wonder LOGO died out and BASIC thrived? AIUI, implementations of BASIC on home computers were a lot simpler and more straightforward than LOGO or LISP - for instance, GC in BASIC was an afterthought and only applied to strings. The real competitor to BASIC back then was FORTH.
- hota_mazi 4y ago
  Mmmh... no. I grew up and learned programming in that era, bought magazines, typed pages and pages of listings. 98% of the listings in these magazines were BASIC, 1% were assembly, and the rest was... well, others. LOGO was a niche language then, and Forth even more so.
bmitc 4y ago
What could Basic do over Logo? As a few of the books I posted show, Logo is a very capable language, ignoring turtles. Was Logo in the 80s somehow less capable?
abecedarius 4y ago
> Big empty void See my comment upthread about Turtle Geometry.