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Seymour Papert, Creator of the Logo Language, Dies At 88 (mit.edu)
New submitter gwolf writes: The great educator, creator of the Logo programming language, and the enabler for computer education in the 1980s has passed away. Listing his contributions is impossible in an article summary, but the ACM has published a short in-memoriam note for him. Papert is, without exaggeration, one of the people I owe my career and life choices to.
My first exposure to programming was MicroWorlds, in third grade. I was immediately hooked, and never turned back. I think it's fairly safe to say that if it wasn't for that, my life would be completely different, and probably for the worse. Rest in peace, Dr. Papert. You set out to teach children to program and love programming, and judging by these comments, you succeeded.
When people argue that we have to teach computer science to kids, it's Papert's approach we should be following. It's worth nothing to teach in cool new technologies, as grade school is not meant for work enablement. We don't need kids learning the concept of the fad-languge-of-the-week. We need kids to start learning algorithmic thinking, to understand how to translate a tangible problem into a computer program, and see a mathematically-described result. Many of us got that as kids, and I'm sure that's what sparked so many of the bright minds that pushed the free software movement from a pipe dream into a thriving reality. Programming can be fun. Programming teaches us new ways to think. It's not about marketability of our kids in 5, 10, 15 years - It's about teaching them tools to think, to create.
Thanks for all of your great work, Dr. Papert.