New York Times coverage, "Seymour Papert, 88, Dies; Saw Education’s Future in Computers":
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/technology/seymour-pape...
Seymour Papert has died
101–110 of 145 posts
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#1022016 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 .
"to augment human intelligence"
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#103Seymour Papert was a great philosopher, whose work on Constructionism has uplifted many children, inspired the OLPC project, and continues to have a huge positive influence on the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionism_(learning_theo...
Here is the source code to LLogo in MACLISP, which I stashed from the MIT-AI ITS system. It's a fascinating historical document, 12,480 lines of beautiful practical lisp code, defining where the rubber meets the road, with drivers for hardware like pots, plotters, robotic turtles, TV turtles, graphical displays, XGP laser printers, music devices, and lots of other interesting code and comments.
http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/lisp/llogo.lisp
Here is a Logo Adventure game I wrote for Terrapin, the first program I ever sold, which they distributed with C64 Terrapin Logo, because they wanted a simple non-graphical game that showed off Logo's list processing capabilities:
http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/logo/adventure.logo
Seymour Papert greatly inspired me, and I applied his work on Constructionist Education to the open source version of SimCity for the OLPC.
http://micropolisonline.com/static/documentation/HAR2009Tran...
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#104For many years, I completely associated Logo with "turtle graphics" -- like it was a toy for kids to learn programming ideas. I only realized a couple years ago that it's a pretty capable language. The best references I found are a 3-volume set that covers using Logo for symbolic computation, making compilers, a diff tool, etc. PDF/HTML at https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html
Logo is essentially just Lisp without parenthesis. Everything is possible, and it's all self contained and defined in terms of itself!
Leigh Klotz wrote a 6502 assembly language assembler in Logo for Terrapin Logo for the Apple ][ and C64, which you could use to extend Logo do to anything you wanted, like interfacing to hardware.
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#105In 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 im…
Likewise, my introduction to computer programming came in the form of StarLogo (a now wildly changed Logo derivative) in the 6th grade while the 2004 election was winding up. Despite the many years it's been since I've used Logo, this news has hit really hit me with sadness for the loss of a personal icon combined with a rush of nostalgic memories of creating graphics and silly games with Logo, along with the fundame…
Books make you learn excercises. There is a place for them, but Logo lets you learn by doing, and by seeing. It doesn't try to teach you algorithms, and math, and optimization: That comes later. All logo tries to teach you is what programming is, and why it's fun.
Although, The Poignant Guide has a special place in my heart as well. It may not introduce programming amazingly well, or anything, but it managed to transcend the format of tutorial, and stands alone as a fascinating and entertaining read. I didn't care about the ruby: I wanted to know what would happen to the cartoon foxes, and if The Originals would be stopped.
After coming back from something involving a very weak course on programming (You know how they say that you can either teach what to think or how to think? this teaches neither, somehow.), it's wonderful to see in logo, scratch, the Guide, hell, even SICP, a willingness to teach not only how to think, but why it matters, and the joy it can bring (not that I'm suggesting we use SICP to bring in kids. shudders)
Between somebody who learned a bit of Logo, and maybe was given some excercises, and somebody who did the Hour of Code, one of them has a better understanding of what programming is about, and is more likely to see its appeal (hint: It's not the kid who did the HOC).
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#106You can try LOGO in your browser with this Javascript-based interpreter by the inimitable Joshual Bell: http://www.calormen.com/jslogo/
Thanks for the link.
I wrote a simple LOGO program to honor Seymour Papert.
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#107I did not have a fortune to get to know the LOGO or even SMALLTALK languages. By the time I've heard about it, it is the C++ or even C, and all us "professionals" dismissed this. I've just read up on the LOGO language on the Wiki, and some of its fortes are based on its roots in functional (encouraging recursions over a set) and declarative style. These people were already thinking about many years ahead for me. I would imagine my career would have been more enriched if I have encountered this early on in my life.
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
My guess is that Papert believed that IIT curriculum (or similar) should be taught everywhere, not limited to the few seats in IIT.
I'm not sure about this. Stanford/Harvard is much more than the curriculum.
Based on what you are responding to, it sounds like you are saying those not at said schools should not learn what is in the curriculum.
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#109Where I met Logo:
1984, Devotion School, Brookline, Massachusetts, Apple computers, Then at home: TI-99/4A.
You?
Re: Seymour Papert has died
#110My 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.
Interesting. Greetings from India . Could you elaborate on his thoughts on that ? I too sometimes feel like I've missed out on a good education. But I feel it's too late now to change that. :(
It is likely referring to the criticisms that IIT creates a socioeconomic pecking order with IIT as the crème de la crème and all the prestige associated with it. I'm not sure, but how much value is seen being an IIT graduate? How much of an edge would it give you in your career?