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  • 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.

    https://mschaef.com/c64

    by mschaef
  • 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 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 the age.
    by briandw
  • I didn't win logo programming competition in polish equivalent of 7th grade and I am still salty about it
    by lackoftactics
  • This is on top of HN right now, and there is still nobody who has mentioned the fact that the tier-1 book Turtle Geometry <https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/4663/Turtle-Geomet...> , is in open access.

    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.

    by turtlegeometry
  • I'm forever grateful for having the access to Logo programming in early 90s, as a kid from a 3rd world country, for how it leads to where I am today.

    My first ever english word that I can spell out is REPEAT.

    by Bankq
  • 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.

    by ihumanable
  • For many years, our students[0] have used Logo as an integral part of their math circle-style[1] classes. When we started Wally Feurzeig, one of the creators of Logo, was instrumental in helping us incorporate ideas from Logo into the kind of non-standard problem solving that we were striving for. Turtle geometry is a particularly helpful "instrument of the mind" for exploring dynamic geometry. Our co-founder, Victor Gutenmacher, wrote an incredible book[2] on "geometry in motion," which gave a completely different perspective on geometry from the one seen in school and which our students could explore with the help of Logo. For many of our students, especially those with math anxiety, Logo was what enabled them to overcome that anxiety and discover the joy of thinking and tinkering. Many programmers today have fond memories of getting into programming via Logo, but I would argue that despite the current blistering pace of progress, it remains one of the best and gentlest introductions to problem solving and computational thinking.

    [0] https://www.gentleknowledge.com/

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_circle

    [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0817641610

    by imb
  • I myself learned programming with logo, at my school when I was 8 or 10. And it was a delight, I am so grateful it existed.

    But quite surprisingly, when later during my Ph.D. part of my time was dedicated to give exercises to students. And we used logo instead of the more usual programming languages. And I think it really helped them to really internalise programming a lot better. Typically, the latest exercices introduced recursion which is immediately visible as fractals.

        HIDETURTLE
    
    PENUP
    SETXY -200 0
    RIGHT 90
    PENDOWN
    
    to dragon :degree :size
        setpensize 1
        if :size>5  [setpensize 2]
        if :size>10 [setpensize 3]
        if :size>20 [setpensize 4]
        if :size>40 [setpensize 5]
        ifelse :degree=0 [
            fd :size
        ][
            left  45 dragon (:degree-1) (size/4)
            right 90 dragon (:degree-1) (size/2)
            left  90 dragon (:degree-1) (size/4)
            right 45
        ]
    end
    
    dragon 6 3000
    if you want to give a try :)
    by yogsototh

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