Computer Science Logo Style

What Hacker News says

1. bmitcAug 2022
   > "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

   * Visual Modeling with Logo: A Structured Approach to Seeing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262530694

   * Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics: https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificia...

   * Computer Science Logo Style: 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.

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2. alexshendiJan 2022
   I think Logo gets a undeserved reputation as a "kindergarden" programming language, when it's actually a nice Lisp dialect. See Brian Harvey's "Computer Science, Logo Style". Available for free for personal use (as in free beer) at:

   1. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html

   2. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v2-toc2.html

   3. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v3-toc2.html

   (edited for better display of list of links)

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3. kjander79Jul 2021
   I love introductory textbooks. Some of my favorites:

   "Starting Forth" - Leo Brodie

   "Computer Science, Logo-Style" series - Brian Harvey

   "Algebra", "Functions and Graphs", "Methods of Coordinates", "Trigonometry" - I.M. Gelfand (does anyone know if he completed his Geometry textbook? I've never seen it. I've also never seen his "Calculus" or "Combinatorics" books, although I know they exist. I suspect his "Combinatorics" book is more advanced than he intended to produce.)

   "Sage for Undergraduates" - Gregory Bard

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4. EL_LocoMay 2021
   There is a company that makes a couple of hardware logo turtles. They've been at it for quite some time too: https://www.terrapinlogo.com/products/robots.html

   edit: there's also a very good three-book series for beginners called Computer Science Logo Style, by a UC Berkeley prof whose name I can't recall... Brian Harvey maybe?

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5. greggirwinJan 2019
   A noted, it's easy to start, but also powerful. Logo was the same. It was most well known for the turtle, but it was really Lisp, and Brian Harvey (Berkeley CS Prof) wrote a great 3-volume series called Computer Science Logo Style.

   Red is potent, but also Alpha.

   Big libraries are rarely needed. e.g., we have a native image datatype, and codecs for 4 common image formats. No external libs needed. The GUI system is built in, though it added to our size quite a bit. We're over 1MB now.

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6. kbpAug 2017
   > Was I the only person who did not understand the draw of Logo as a kid? Having to use it in school made me feel like the world viewed me as a lobotomy victim.

   > And today, whenever one of these teaching-kids-to-program language/environments comes out, I always wonder, "is a real language really beyond the 8-10 year old's grasp?"

   > I wish someone had introduced me to Lisp as a child. It's so fundamental. I remember thinking in similar terms, and would have had my mind blown on so many different levels if someone had introduced me to Lisp when I was 8-10, or even younger.

   Logo is a real language, and it is extremely similar to Lisp; a lot of people even just refer to it as a Lisp dialect. There's a lot more to Logo than turtle graphics, the same way there's a lot more to Racket or Python or any other language that has a turtle graphics package.

   Basically, you were more or less introduced to Lisp when you were a kid, and having to use it in school made you feel like the world viewed you as a lobotomy victim.

   The problem you encountered probably stems less from Logo and more from being taught Logo by teachers who barely knew it themselves, and who didn't care about or understand anything beyond turtle graphics, so that's all they're able to teach to students.

   Here's a good introduction to Logo by Brian Harvey with an emphasis on symbolic computation: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computer-science-logo-style

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