3 ms·

Logo: Programming with Turtle Graphics (IBM PC) (1983)

75 points by susam 2y ago

susam 2y ago
This HN submission is incredibly special to me! I had been searching for this manual for a very long time, finding several closely related documents but never this particular one. When I couldn't locate the manual anywhere, I turned to the HN community with an "Ask HN" post [1]. Remarkably, within just 23 hours, a generous HN user, rmini, scanned all 240 pages of the manual and shared it with us [2]. See the links below for the discussion on the aforementioned "Ask HN" post that resulted in this document becoming available on archive.org! Thank you, @rmini, for your generosity and help! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40691792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40691792 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40694386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40694386
mmastrac 2y ago
I'm a little biased because I grew up with it, but I think the best LOGO implementation was for the COLECO ADAM, with its amazing manual: https://archive.org/details/coleco-adam-smart-logo-manual https://archive.org/details/coleco-adam-smart-logo-manual
dvirsky 2y ago
That is the first programming environment I ever used. It was an amazing starting point.
- yonder 2y ago
  For me as well. I've been a CTO of a software company since 2011, but this is how I got started.
mococa 2y ago
I learned how to program in Logo at the age of 8, using the turtle.
- ylee 2y ago
  I well remember the epiphany I felt while learning Logo in elementary school, at the moment I understood what recursion is. While I have never worked as a professional software developer, computers have been a hobby all my life. I don't think the fact that the language I have mostly written code in in recent years is Emacs Lisp is unrelated to the above moment.
GZGavinZhao 2y ago
At least until around 2015 my elementary school was still using Logo as a introduction to programming using a Logo implementation on Windows 7. We had no idea that what we were doing was programming; it was just fun to see what sort of weird/crazy shapes we could come up with and share with other students. I think its purpose has now been replaced by Scratch, but still, good times and I will always remember that little turtle that brought us tons of fun.
sleepybrett 2y ago
I did a summer school/camp program at my local HS when i was about maybe 10 or 11 where we learned logo on apple //s, they even had a could of turtle robots that were controlled via, i assume, the serial port. So by the end we all got to send one of our programs to the bot to draw out in sharpie on a big roll of craft paper. I'm sure in my parents attic somewhere there it's probably still rolled up in a box. Love the immediacy and physicality of that to this day, which is why i still love processing as a learning language for kids. Oh nice, someone has done some work restoring on of those little robots: https://www.waitingforfriday.com/?p=70 https://www.waitingforfriday.com/?p=70
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  For their ancestors, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grey_Walter#Robots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grey_Walter#Robots
- jasomill 2y ago
  I had lots of fun with the LEGO TC logo system at around the same age: https://archive.org/details/lego-tc-logo-getting-started/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/lego-tc-logo-getting-started/mod...
ayhanfuat 2y ago
“How do I move the turtle in Logo” was one of the controversial questions in Stack Overflow back in the date. It was posted by Joel Spolsky, one of the co-creators and then deleted by Jeff Atwood, the other co-creator. I like it because it illustrates the two cultures so well. Joel thought it was a reasonable and answerable question and Jeff thought it wasn’t specific enough to be a real question. In the end Stack Overflow went Jeff’s way which I think is a pity. The question was undeleted later for its “historical significance”: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-the-turtle-in-logo https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-th...
- SebFender 2y ago
  AI says bye to Stack Overflow
cies 2y ago
My first proglang, at age 7, was MSX-LOGO. English is not my first language, but this language was translated to my mother tongue, and came with an instruction book in my mother tongue. So I could get started, all by myself, at a rather young age. After getting the fundamentals down in MSX-LOGO, I learned BASIC and some part of English at the same time: learning BASIC made learning English fun. This was before I had any classes in English. I hoped MSX-BASIC allowed me to make fast running programs, but it did not. It was not until many years later that I got introduced to open source. Now I has access to compilers, libraries, languages: everything I needed to make fast programs. Aware of my new found powers I decided to build a modern version of MSX-LOGO: an integrated programming environment for learning purpose in which the syntax is translated to the mother tongue of the programmer. I got it into the KDE project so it would be translated. Tada: https://apps.kde.org/kturtle/ https://apps.kde.org/kturtle/ I've met several people who's first experience with programming was with KTurtle in a language other than English (it's currently translated in 25+ languages) https://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/trunk-kf6/package/kturtle/ https://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/trunk-kf6/package/kturtle/ If we want to have a rich open source ecosystem we better make the on-ramp for new contributors are easy as can be. In this way I wanted to give back (help strengthen) the open source commons.
- tomcam 2y ago
  Very cool. Thank you for creating it and thank you for sharing the story.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
twothamendment 2y ago
I used turtle in middle school. I think that was my first experience where I got to tell a computer what to do and make something. We had a very limited amount of time in the lab, but I loved every bit if it!
layer8 2y ago
I'm so nostalgic for 1980s manuals that describe the purpose of everything from the ground up, like taking six pages to explain the keyboard.
Duanemclemore 2y ago
I wrote a LOGO program to tile the screen on the Apple IIe in my elementary school with hexagons when I was 7. It's been downhill ever since.
Qem 2y ago
There is a logo implementation that runs in libreoffice: https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/librelogo/LibreLogo.html https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/libre...
vram22 2y ago
Related: check this post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13264041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13264041 It's about the IBM PC Jr., which I had, and on which I wrote a lot of hobbyist code. Mostly in the built-in BASIC, but some in Logo too (which I did not mention in the post). Logo came with the Jr. It was fun to program in. The post also links to Mike Brutman's PC Jr. page, a retrocomputing site. I has emailed with him about our common interest in the Jr.
empressplay 2y ago
My partner and I develop a modern version of Logo called turtleSpaces. It uses a vastly expanded version of LCSI Logo from the Apple II: https://turtlespaces.org https://turtlespaces.org
SebFender 2y ago
Only IBM can turn Logo into a 246 page document.
samiq 2y ago
this is how I got started in 35 years ago, thanks for resurfacing this
jasomill 2y ago
Physical turtle sold separately: https://archive.org/details/lego-tc-logo-teaching-the-turtle_202012/page/n6/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/lego-tc-logo-teaching-the-turtle...

75 points by susam 2y ago

This HN submission is incredibly special to me! I had been searching for this manual for a very long time, finding several closely related documents but never this particular one. When I couldn't locate the manual anywhere, I turned to the HN community with an "Ask HN" post [1]. Remarkably, within just 23 hours, a generous HN user, rmini, scanned all 240 pages of the manual and shared it with us [2]. See the links below for the discussion on the aforementioned "Ask HN" post that resulted in this document becoming available on archive.org! Thank you, @rmini, for your generosity and help! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40691792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40691792 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40694386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40694386

mmastrac 2y ago

I'm a little biased because I grew up with it, but I think the best LOGO implementation was for the COLECO ADAM, with its amazing manual: https://archive.org/details/coleco-adam-smart-logo-manual https://archive.org/details/coleco-adam-smart-logo-manual

dvirsky 2y ago

That is the first programming environment I ever used. It was an amazing starting point.

yonder 2y ago
For me as well. I've been a CTO of a software company since 2011, but this is how I got started.

mococa 2y ago

I learned how to program in Logo at the age of 8, using the turtle.

ylee 2y ago
I well remember the epiphany I felt while learning Logo in elementary school, at the moment I understood what recursion is. While I have never worked as a professional software developer, computers have been a hobby all my life. I don't think the fact that the language I have mostly written code in in recent years is Emacs Lisp is unrelated to the above moment.

GZGavinZhao 2y ago

At least until around 2015 my elementary school was still using Logo as a introduction to programming using a Logo implementation on Windows 7. We had no idea that what we were doing was programming; it was just fun to see what sort of weird/crazy shapes we could come up with and share with other students. I think its purpose has now been replaced by Scratch, but still, good times and I will always remember that little turtle that brought us tons of fun.

sleepybrett 2y ago

I did a summer school/camp program at my local HS when i was about maybe 10 or 11 where we learned logo on apple //s, they even had a could of turtle robots that were controlled via, i assume, the serial port. So by the end we all got to send one of our programs to the bot to draw out in sharpie on a big roll of craft paper. I'm sure in my parents attic somewhere there it's probably still rolled up in a box. Love the immediacy and physicality of that to this day, which is why i still love processing as a learning language for kids. Oh nice, someone has done some work restoring on of those little robots: https://www.waitingforfriday.com/?p=70 https://www.waitingforfriday.com/?p=70

082349872349872 2y ago
For their ancestors, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grey_Walter#Robots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grey_Walter#Robots
jasomill 2y ago
I had lots of fun with the LEGO TC logo system at around the same age: https://archive.org/details/lego-tc-logo-getting-started/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/lego-tc-logo-getting-started/mod...

ayhanfuat 2y ago

“How do I move the turtle in Logo” was one of the controversial questions in Stack Overflow back in the date. It was posted by Joel Spolsky, one of the co-creators and then deleted by Jeff Atwood, the other co-creator. I like it because it illustrates the two cultures so well. Joel thought it was a reasonable and answerable question and Jeff thought it wasn’t specific enough to be a real question. In the end Stack Overflow went Jeff’s way which I think is a pity. The question was undeleted later for its “historical significance”: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-the-turtle-in-logo https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003841/how-do-i-move-th...

SebFender 2y ago
AI says bye to Stack Overflow

cies 2y ago

My first proglang, at age 7, was MSX-LOGO. English is not my first language, but this language was translated to my mother tongue, and came with an instruction book in my mother tongue. So I could get started, all by myself, at a rather young age. After getting the fundamentals down in MSX-LOGO, I learned BASIC and some part of English at the same time: learning BASIC made learning English fun. This was before I had any classes in English. I hoped MSX-BASIC allowed me to make fast running programs, but it did not. It was not until many years later that I got introduced to open source. Now I has access to compilers, libraries, languages: everything I needed to make fast programs. Aware of my new found powers I decided to build a modern version of MSX-LOGO: an integrated programming environment for learning purpose in which the syntax is translated to the mother tongue of the programmer. I got it into the KDE project so it would be translated. Tada: https://apps.kde.org/kturtle/ https://apps.kde.org/kturtle/ I've met several people who's first experience with programming was with KTurtle in a language other than English (it's currently translated in 25+ languages) https://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/trunk-kf6/package/kturtle/ https://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/trunk-kf6/package/kturtle/ If we want to have a rich open source ecosystem we better make the on-ramp for new contributors are easy as can be. In this way I wanted to give back (help strengthen) the open source commons.

tomcam 2y ago
Very cool. Thank you for creating it and thank you for sharing the story.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

twothamendment 2y ago

I used turtle in middle school. I think that was my first experience where I got to tell a computer what to do and make something. We had a very limited amount of time in the lab, but I loved every bit if it!

layer8 2y ago

I'm so nostalgic for 1980s manuals that describe the purpose of everything from the ground up, like taking six pages to explain the keyboard.

Duanemclemore 2y ago

I wrote a LOGO program to tile the screen on the Apple IIe in my elementary school with hexagons when I was 7. It's been downhill ever since.

Qem 2y ago

There is a logo implementation that runs in libreoffice: https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/librelogo/LibreLogo.html https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/libre...

vram22 2y ago

Related: check this post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13264041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13264041 It's about the IBM PC Jr., which I had, and on which I wrote a lot of hobbyist code. Mostly in the built-in BASIC, but some in Logo too (which I did not mention in the post). Logo came with the Jr. It was fun to program in. The post also links to Mike Brutman's PC Jr. page, a retrocomputing site. I has emailed with him about our common interest in the Jr.

empressplay 2y ago

My partner and I develop a modern version of Logo called turtleSpaces. It uses a vastly expanded version of LCSI Logo from the Apple II: https://turtlespaces.org https://turtlespaces.org

SebFender 2y ago

Only IBM can turn Logo into a 246 page document.

samiq 2y ago

this is how I got started in 35 years ago, thanks for resurfacing this

jasomill 2y ago

Physical turtle sold separately: https://archive.org/details/lego-tc-logo-teaching-the-turtle_202012/page/n6/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/lego-tc-logo-teaching-the-turtle...