4 ms·

Forward 40: Where is LOGO?

13 points by nickb 19y ago

mdemare 19y ago
I'm not a big fan of LOGO either. Drawing lines gets boring quickly. I'm reminded of picking a university. I went to two introductory CS courses. One had us drawing Mickey Mouse in Pascal on a old Mac, which gave me a deep hatred of Apple that lasted until I discovered OSX. The other was an introduction to MINIX. And the end, we all received a disk with MINIX on it. I didn't even know at the time that there were alternatives to MS-DOS, and was deeply impressed. Moral: Don't be condescending to kids - it's better to overestimate them. And LOGO is a condescending language.
- Shorel 19y ago
  No, it is not. Some LOGO books are, but the language is not. I tried reading 'Turtle Geometry' when I was young. Some parts are like University Maths. In fact, all of it is very strict in the mathematical sense. And all is based on LOGO. For someone in high school who had no idea of trigonometry, it was mind blowing.
zaidf 19y ago
Oh man! All through elementary school in India, we were taught in every single class that "LOGO is the language of the computer". This was about 12 years ago. I didn't really like the computer or programming much back then and almost flunked the LOGO exam. That just goes to say how cool the language is--I went into the exam clueless but after typing a few "LEFT" and "RIGHT" I was amazed it did exactly what you ask it to.
- zaidf 19y ago
  To the poor soul who likes to down-mod every comment I post, hope life gets better!
  - MuddyMo 19y ago
    zaidf, you are wise, my friend. To have compassion for such a person is unique and uncommon. I join you in hoping life does get better for that person, because it must be so very sad to be in trapped in such a life.
far33d 19y ago
I will never forget programming an animated rocket that blasts off in my 3rd grade glass... Logo is great.
- far33d 19y ago
  And then writing Logo as a project my soph year.... ah, the full circle of education.
sspencer 19y ago
The article mentions Oregon Trail as another classic app that changed lives at a young age -- this is dead on. I remember playing Oregon Trail during "computer time" as young as 2nd grade (about 8 years old) and wondering how the computer translated my keyboard input into what to display on the screen. And thus, a future hacker's curiosity is piqued. If only my family didn't die of dysentery so often...
- icey 19y ago
  Hahah all Oregon Trail prepped me for was Castle Wolfenstein. I'd spend all my money on bullets and hope I could find some buffalo to strafe.
- oditogre 19y ago
  I seem to remember cholera being the big killer...
oditogre 19y ago
I never liked LOGO. It was just one of the programs available for us to play with during 'computer lab time', and as far as I can remember we were never taught how to use it; commands were passed on in a sort of oral tradition from older schoolmates to younger. Since then, I've learned how cool it can really be and wondered about it often, though. Anybody know of a good, true-to-the-old-school-basic-program that's freeware for Win32? *Edit: And while I'm at it with old games and such that I miss...anybody know where I can get ahold of a BASIC with the old nibbles.bas and gorilla.bas that came with QBASIC?
iamwil 19y ago
Logo hasn't disappeared, though it's evolved a bit. Northwestern University has a version of Logo called NetLogo. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ It's a decentralized version of logo, where you can control multiple turtles at once. It's useful in simulating distributed systems, such as "turtles, termites, and traffic jams." There's a book by Mitchel Resnick by the same name. http://books.google.com/books?id=K8P1rX8T4kYC&dq=turtles+termites+traffic+jams&pg=PP1&ots=xjELl6ou14&sig=vbEYZIfpZuAgy9oWsx4zEEn0VbE&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3Dturtles%2Btermites%2Btraffic%2Bjams%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dcom.ubuntu:en-US:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail http://books.google.com/books?id=K8P1rX8T4kYC&dq=turtles... If you get a chance, run some of the simulations on their demo page. They're available as java applets. It's pretty amazing to see complex patterns stem from simple interactions, also a theme of Wolfram.
- Tichy 19y ago
  I went to a Summer School in Collective Intelligence this year, and chose Netlogo to implement a project. It was definitely fun: quite messy., but you really could get an experiment up and running very quickly. In fact most teams chose Netlogo for their experiments. So Logo is alive ;-)
joe_fishfish 19y ago
In my school we had a mechanical turtle that drew lines on a big piece of paper on the floor. If you were really good and didn't mess around with your screen turtle you got to have a go at using it. We had to stop using it when someone gave it the command FORWARD 500 and it pulled its own cable out of the computer. Good times.

13 points by nickb 19y ago

I'm not a big fan of LOGO either. Drawing lines gets boring quickly. I'm reminded of picking a university. I went to two introductory CS courses. One had us drawing Mickey Mouse in Pascal on a old Mac, which gave me a deep hatred of Apple that lasted until I discovered OSX. The other was an introduction to MINIX. And the end, we all received a disk with MINIX on it. I didn't even know at the time that there were alternatives to MS-DOS, and was deeply impressed. Moral: Don't be condescending to kids - it's better to overestimate them. And LOGO is a condescending language.

Shorel 19y ago
No, it is not. Some LOGO books are, but the language is not. I tried reading 'Turtle Geometry' when I was young. Some parts are like University Maths. In fact, all of it is very strict in the mathematical sense. And all is based on LOGO. For someone in high school who had no idea of trigonometry, it was mind blowing.

zaidf 19y ago

Oh man! All through elementary school in India, we were taught in every single class that "LOGO is the language of the computer". This was about 12 years ago. I didn't really like the computer or programming much back then and almost flunked the LOGO exam. That just goes to say how cool the language is--I went into the exam clueless but after typing a few "LEFT" and "RIGHT" I was amazed it did exactly what you ask it to.

zaidf 19y ago
To the poor soul who likes to down-mod every comment I post, hope life gets better!
- MuddyMo 19y ago
  zaidf, you are wise, my friend. To have compassion for such a person is unique and uncommon. I join you in hoping life does get better for that person, because it must be so very sad to be in trapped in such a life.

far33d 19y ago

I will never forget programming an animated rocket that blasts off in my 3rd grade glass... Logo is great.

far33d 19y ago
And then writing Logo as a project my soph year.... ah, the full circle of education.

sspencer 19y ago

The article mentions Oregon Trail as another classic app that changed lives at a young age -- this is dead on. I remember playing Oregon Trail during "computer time" as young as 2nd grade (about 8 years old) and wondering how the computer translated my keyboard input into what to display on the screen. And thus, a future hacker's curiosity is piqued. If only my family didn't die of dysentery so often...

icey 19y ago
Hahah all Oregon Trail prepped me for was Castle Wolfenstein. I'd spend all my money on bullets and hope I could find some buffalo to strafe.
oditogre 19y ago
I seem to remember cholera being the big killer...

oditogre 19y ago

I never liked LOGO. It was just one of the programs available for us to play with during 'computer lab time', and as far as I can remember we were never taught how to use it; commands were passed on in a sort of oral tradition from older schoolmates to younger. Since then, I've learned how cool it can really be and wondered about it often, though. Anybody know of a good, true-to-the-old-school-basic-program that's freeware for Win32? *Edit: And while I'm at it with old games and such that I miss...anybody know where I can get ahold of a BASIC with the old nibbles.bas and gorilla.bas that came with QBASIC?

iamwil 19y ago

Logo hasn't disappeared, though it's evolved a bit. Northwestern University has a version of Logo called NetLogo. http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ It's a decentralized version of logo, where you can control multiple turtles at once. It's useful in simulating distributed systems, such as "turtles, termites, and traffic jams." There's a book by Mitchel Resnick by the same name. http://books.google.com/books?id=K8P1rX8T4kYC&dq=turtles+termites+traffic+jams&pg=PP1&ots=xjELl6ou14&sig=vbEYZIfpZuAgy9oWsx4zEEn0VbE&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3Dturtles%2Btermites%2Btraffic%2Bjams%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dcom.ubuntu:en-US:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail http://books.google.com/books?id=K8P1rX8T4kYC&dq=turtles... If you get a chance, run some of the simulations on their demo page. They're available as java applets. It's pretty amazing to see complex patterns stem from simple interactions, also a theme of Wolfram.

Tichy 19y ago
I went to a Summer School in Collective Intelligence this year, and chose Netlogo to implement a project. It was definitely fun: quite messy., but you really could get an experiment up and running very quickly. In fact most teams chose Netlogo for their experiments. So Logo is alive ;-)

joe_fishfish 19y ago

In my school we had a mechanical turtle that drew lines on a big piece of paper on the floor. If you were really good and didn't mess around with your screen turtle you got to have a go at using it. We had to stop using it when someone gave it the command FORWARD 500 and it pulled its own cable out of the computer. Good times.