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.
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.
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.
I have a list of about 32 8-bit Logo implementations and the earliest is 1981 (Krell's and Terrapin on the Apple II). The latest is 1986 (Logotron on the BBC Micro). There were also 16-bit versions for DOS. After that there were other 16-bit implementations like Amiga Logo. Before that I think it was on mini-computers.
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.
Also as a child, I was amazed by the associative tables it offered; I thought "I can make intelligent programs". I think I was thinking AI but I won't trust my memory on this. But I played a lot more with the turtle.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Very similar to my story. Sometimes I feel sad that I'll never know who was the enlightened administrator in my humble district who somehow got my elementary school an Apple computer lab with Logo in 1983, and that they'll never know what an impact it made on my life.
Same here, we had two rooms that had 20+ Apple II computers, each student could use their own machine all to themselves. And our district was not rich, it must have cost more than 150k in today dollars.
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.
We had the Roamer, British school, very early 90's.
I remember programming a logo/turtle type thing on the BBC Micro, and then I think there was a way to copy the program on to the Roamer directly from the BBC. Or maybe we did it manually. But it was amazing to me, and I always felt sad we didnt use it more!
The on-screen "turtle" made famous by microcomputer Logos was originally just such a robot: a wheeled dome with a pen inside that you could program by giving commands written in Logo. Papert reasoned that you could get kids interested in programming by teaching them to use programs as a tool for something with which they are already familiar (drawing). The real turtles were expensive to procure in the 1960s and 1970s, so by the time the 80s came around and 8-bitters were becoming more affordable for homes and schools, the screen turtle was conceived as a substitute.
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.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 20.2 ms ] threadI... participed in the competition, but that's all.
The language is still alive but I think Scratch has mostly taken its place.
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.
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.
https://www.netlogo.org/
It's GPL with specifications based on real lanagues, so you can experiment or even make your commits or PRs
It's been all downhill since.
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
https://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html#fg=96...
You can click on the time-of-post to "vouch" for down-voted or "[dead]" comments to bring them back.
Otherwise, to read them, I will select the text which highlights it in high contrast. Ctl-A on many browsers or triple click on a paragraph.
https://www.vectrexmuseum.com/mirror/vgdb/pages/VGDB059.html
After a while I was running laps around my teachers and I knew computers were for me.
It was like a little futuristic tank. I searched for a minute, and I cannot find it. Did I imagine this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak
Doesn't have a pen, but maybe it was a modified version of that toy?
One later variant is the Valiant Roamer https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/30545/Valiant-Roamer...
I remember programming a logo/turtle type thing on the BBC Micro, and then I think there was a way to copy the program on to the Roamer directly from the BBC. Or maybe we did it manually. But it was amazing to me, and I always felt sad we didnt use it more!
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.