As a math teacher with a background in computer science, Papert's work has influenced me tremendously, although I never got the chance to meet him.
His spirit lives on in his books.
Seymour Papert has died
61–70 of 145 posts
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#62RIP, Seymour Papert. Scratch is the spiritual successor to Logo. As Scratch becomes more and more popular, it has been sad to say that there is a tension between the spirit of Scratch and commercialization. Scratch is all about exploration and making mistakes and experiential learning. However, there is a deluge of companies who are trying to create curriculums for Scratch that fit into the traditional School lesson…
While I'm a bit bummed about the general commercialization of some elements of Scratch, I think it's fair to say that there is an encouraging amount of work being done in parallel with Scratch that keeps us from living in a monoculture of blocks. As examples, the blockly [0] library makes it easier for devs to build blocks-based programming interfaces for a lot of systems. It's been used in App Inventor for building…
Adding one more: https://computinged.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/introducing-gp-...
"GP is a new blocks-based programming language being developed by John Maloney (most well-known for developing Scratch), Jens Mönig (developer of Snap!), and Yoshiki Ohshima (one of the developers of Squeak EToys) in Alan Kay’s group. They are all part of the new partnership between Alan Kay and Y-Combinator Research: HARC (Human Advancement Research Community). GP started in the SAP-funded CDG (Communications Design Group)."
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#63RIP, Seymour Papert. Scratch is the spiritual successor to Logo. As Scratch becomes more and more popular, it has been sad to say that there is a tension between the spirit of Scratch and commercialization. Scratch is all about exploration and making mistakes and experiential learning. However, there is a deluge of companies who are trying to create curriculums for Scratch that fit into the traditional School lesson…
Scratch 1.4 is still the best version: Why? Because it was the last version of scratch built on MIT Squeak. There is nothing quite like discovering shift-click r, and seeing the code that built your environment for the first time.
Also, check out Snap! the Scratch 2.0 successor to BYOB that is essentially a stealth Scheme.
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, we updated the link from https://twitter.com/LogoFoundation/status/760057041687830528 .
Better but not great because the new link is not specific to this story. This is a better link http://www.media.mit.edu/people/in-memory/papert It was submitted but incorrectly marked as a dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12204756
Thanks very much. We've changed to that from http://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/.
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#65[deleted]
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#662016 strikes again. :( Seymour Papert was "co-creator of Logo" in much the same way that Doug Engelbart was "creator of the mouse". Their ideas were bigger than something you can fit in a headline. Papert believed that computers had a unique potential to help us learn and think. Anyone interested in computers or education should check out his book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas .
I want to emphasize the "or" in that last sentence -- everyone should read Mindstorms.
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#67This is the first time I've heard of Seymour, but it looks like he really tried to increase education around programming and computers, especially with younger kids/teenagers (e.g. Logo in Lego Windstorms, One Laptop Per Child), and for that I'm deeply respectful. Making computers and programming more accessible is really wonderful.
RIP Seymour Papert.
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#68In 200x, when I was in 4th grade, my teacher said that that day, we would be learning some programming. We were strictly a Mac school, and Scratch wasn't as well known at the time, so the language and environment we learned was Terrapin Logo.
There's nothing like looking at the screen and seeing something that you made come to life for the first time. And there's nothing quite like being given a problem that seems impossibly hard at first, cracking it, and seeing the result in front of you. It was a magical moment, and though I would not do any more work in logo (UCBLogo wouldn't compile for me), that sense of wonder and magic, and that amazement and the feeling of looking at something, and understanding the complexity that makes it work, and knowing that you designed it, built it, and made it work, that is why I program. For the sheer joy of it.
Thank you Seymour, for everything.
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#69My office was next door to Seymour's office at the Media Lab. This was before the motorcycle accident in Vietnam. I was a freshly arrived student from India. His main observation about India was about how the IITs were terrible for the country because they left such a profound debilitating effect on those who did not make it to those schools.
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#70You can try LOGO in your browser with this Javascript-based interpreter by the inimitable Joshual Bell: http://www.calormen.com/jslogo/