In the early nineties in elementary school I lived in Belgium, and went to a summer camp where we programmed with Logo in a localized French version.
I had played with Logo on Apple IIe's in the US, and thought it made sense that in a French-speaking region[0] they'd have a French version. I relearned what little I already knew, but regrettably, this did not help greatly with my French skills.
All I remember from this is that `hazard' was the random built-in. Dunno why that's stuck, but there's probably some more important bit of information that should be in my brain if that weren't.
[0] Yeah, yeah, I know French, Flemish, and German are the official languages. I was in a French-speaking part.
Do yourself a favor, and read it today : it is that good.
Even though it is quite depressing to see that the revolution in education that the book was predicting in its preface, simply never happened.
They taught us Logo at school in the early 90s in Lima, Peru. I'll never forget the aha moment of going from "forward 10, left 90" to "repeat 360 [forward 1 right 1]" and bam a circle! They had us bring a formatted 5in floppy disk (they were indeed floppy) to our first class; what was this sorcery?
I still remember when we learned logo in elementary school. I had to get my mom to go out and buy a 3.5" disk so I could save my programs.
When I realized that all of logo was actually saved on that disk and I could continue playing with the turtle at home, I was amazed.
Drawing little things, realizing that I was repeating stuff and breaking it into little functions so I could draw them again more easily. I was learning the essentials of programming and didn't even realize it.
We had it (or one of the clones) in middle school, but it was a demo version that had saving disabled. Half of each class was messing with the turtle. The other half was writing down the code with pen and paper so that we can have it graded.
I remember learning LOGO in school. There was a single 4K computer for the entire school, so we learned how to program by calling out turtle commands to the teacher who would draw the results with a marker on a sheet of plastic on an overhead projector.
At the end of that exercise, the accumulated commands would be taken to the computer (in another part of the school) and entered into the computer, and eventually we'd get a plotter printout showing the results.
Those early days of computing feel like we were like being on another planet.
Anyone here remember a 1980's Logo-programmable robot that I once used in a TAG program? It had a pen, we would lay it on top of a giant sheet of paper.
It was like a little futuristic tank. I searched for a minute, and I cannot find the exact model. Did I imagine this?
I learned the Language through examples because the version provided by the school didn't have documentation and in 00s Poland internet was still relatively rare.
I... participed in the competition, but that's all.
Logo was created by by Seymour Papert. I highly recommend his book Mindstorms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindstorms_(book)
It was written in 1980 but mostly could have mostly been written today. All the same issues with teachers misunderstandings and fear of math and technology and refusal to change to meet the challenges of age.
Back in 1983, my elementary school was a part of a Logo pilot program. We had a lab of Commodore 64's that I had free run of (my mom was a teacher there), and it's why I do what I do all these years later.
What I find interesting it that it's not just programming, specifically. Logo is a highly interactive and dynamic language (a relative of Lisp), and that influenced the way I think about writing code. Seymour Papert did a lot for me, albeit highly indirectly.
I learnt that I must be good at computers when in 4th grade, despite never having touched a PC before, I not only managed to ace my Logo class but was asked by my teacher to help out other struggling students (I am just realising that essentially made me a TA in our class). I still remember trying to understand the Pen Up and Pen Down commands from a book with no immediate access to a PC to try them on.
Logo was my introduction to programming. Working on a 1 MHz Commodore64, my masterpiece was a fireworks show that was animated by the fact that the individual drawing commands were so slow you could watch them play out.
So, draw a curve from the ground to the sky. Draw some explosion shape. Change pen color to the sky color. Draw the curve and the explosion again to erase them. Change pen color and start the next firework.
Logo started my love of programming. I will always be thankful for it and that little turtle. IIRC there was a limit of 128 stamps in LogoWriter and my sister and I would fight so much about it.
Oh my god - Logo, brings back memories of my childhood and my first "microcomputer": ZX Spectrum +.
I spent countless hours trying to force the damn turtle to draw shapes I wanted it to. Unbelievable that this language is still alive.
Berkeley Logo was one of my first programming languages. The idea of declaring functions with the keyword “to” still feels like a fun and good idea, even though of course it doesn’t matter. Just a different perspective.
Yeah, somehow I owe my entire software engineering career to that flower and garden program example. There was something about being able to add new words based on primitives, and new words based on custom words, that captured me for good.
We used Logo on Apple IIs quite a bit in the 80s but I don't have fond memories because Logo is one of those things that at the time when using it one had no idea (and neither did the teachers teaching it) that there was something of much more substance behind it than just drawing lines and circles on the screen. Which was frankly kind of boring. We'd get as far as simple procedures but that's it.
There's a whole Lispy beauty behind the language that teachers didn't know how to transmit to the kids because they themselves didn't understand it. The emphasis on turtle graphics was limiting.
NetLogo is its own language, but definitely inspired by and modeled on the original Logo (thus the name). But it has some differences in syntax and semantics, and is oriented toward agent based modeling (which also introduces some new syntax and semantics).
My first ever english word that I can spell out is REPEAT.
I had played with Logo on Apple IIe's in the US, and thought it made sense that in a French-speaking region[0] they'd have a French version. I relearned what little I already knew, but regrettably, this did not help greatly with my French skills.
All I remember from this is that `hazard' was the random built-in. Dunno why that's stuck, but there's probably some more important bit of information that should be in my brain if that weren't.
[0] Yeah, yeah, I know French, Flemish, and German are the official languages. I was in a French-speaking part.
Do yourself a favor, and read it today : it is that good. Even though it is quite depressing to see that the revolution in education that the book was predicting in its preface, simply never happened.
When I realized that all of logo was actually saved on that disk and I could continue playing with the turtle at home, I was amazed.
Drawing little things, realizing that I was repeating stuff and breaking it into little functions so I could draw them again more easily. I was learning the essentials of programming and didn't even realize it.
At the end of that exercise, the accumulated commands would be taken to the computer (in another part of the school) and entered into the computer, and eventually we'd get a plotter printout showing the results.
Those early days of computing feel like we were like being on another planet.
It was like a little futuristic tank. I searched for a minute, and I cannot find the exact model. Did I imagine this?
One later variant is the Valiant Roamer https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/30545/Valiant-Roamer...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak
Doesn't have a pen, but maybe it was a modified version of that toy?
It seems my pen memory came from a different logo-driven bot. In-fact, the Big Trak was not even Logo-driven, but had a similar command system.
I appear to have combined childhood recollections, but that was the shape I was "remembering." No wonder, just look at that thing! lol
I... participed in the competition, but that's all.
> Don't know how to HIDE
:(
What I find interesting it that it's not just programming, specifically. Logo is a highly interactive and dynamic language (a relative of Lisp), and that influenced the way I think about writing code. Seymour Papert did a lot for me, albeit highly indirectly.
https://mschaef.com/c64
It's been all downhill since.
310 versions!! https://pavel.it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/logotree/pdf/LogoTree.pdf
How come no one makes dialects of PHP?? :)
So, draw a curve from the ground to the sky. Draw some explosion shape. Change pen color to the sky color. Draw the curve and the explosion again to erase them. Change pen color and start the next firework.
After a while I was running laps around my teachers and I knew computers were for me.
The language is still alive but I think Scratch has mostly taken its place.
There's a whole Lispy beauty behind the language that teachers didn't know how to transmit to the kids because they themselves didn't understand it. The emphasis on turtle graphics was limiting.
https://www.netlogo.org/
https://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html#fg=96...