Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

LOGO Still Lives -- New Java-Based Version Released

Posted by timothy on from the turtles-aren't-just-for-soup-any-more dept.

farrellj writes "Many people were introduced to computer programming using a virtual turtle, or if you were lucky a robotic turtle. Created in the '60s by a bunch of people at MIT, including one of the formost experts on computer aided learning Seymour Papert, it gave a good grounding in programming in a day when BASIC and PASCAL were the only other easily available languages...I use to teach LOGO at a computer lab in Ottawa, but have lost touch with LOGO for many years. Today, a email appeared in my mailbox announcing a new release of LOGO called StarLOGO from MIT...wow...it is done in JAVA, and looks pretty snazzy. It runs on just about any platform, and I think that it again may be a great way to get young kids interested in programming. It took me about 2 minutes to get it running...just untar it, and run a shell script, and I had the enivronment up and running. In a couple more minutes, I was writing programs that created graphical displays that would look great at raves. So I guess it's for kids of all ages!"

3 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. War and Peace by oku · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Speaking of Logo and Java, RoboCode somewhat reminded me of Logo, although in a less peaceful, less turtlesque style. Maybe that would be Logo for (maybe not quite) grown-ups.

  2. my experience w/LOGO. by garcia · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was in a computer class that taught LOGO in 6th or 7th grade. By that time I was already very familiar w/BASIC and somewhat familiar with PASCAL. I found it to be a waste of my time and actually made me less interested in other languages.

    Everyone's experieneces are different I guess but I just don't see how you can show LOGO as instilling the programming bug (no, not intended) into school-aged kids.

  3. my logo experience by bpowell423 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was first introduced to logo when my 2-years-younger brother came home from school with a homework assignment. I had learned programming in Basic (ZX81, TS2068, C128), and I think I had started learning C at the time (still in high school). Anyway, my brother was NEVER interested in computers, but he was able to pick up LOGO very quickly. They were mostly writing recursive programs for drawing "snow-flakes" and other shapes.