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History of Logo

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Re: History of Logo

#71

Post by DonHopkins »

larsbrinkhoff wrote: post #21
DonHopkins wrote: post #17

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 It's a fascinating historical document, 12,480 lines of beautiful practical lisp code, defining where the rubber meets the road, with drivers for hardware like pots, plotters, robotic turtles, TV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. https://donhopkins.com…

Also running on the emulator: PDP-10 Logo, PDP-11 Logo, Applle II Logo. The emulator doesn't support the robot arm yet.

This robot arm??! Yikes! It's getting very huggy there. The nerd (Bill Bennett?) at the end looks very trusting and confident.

http://projects.csail.mit.edu/video/history/aifilms/07-arm.m...

https://projects.csail.mit.edu/films/aifilms/Podcasts/05-lif...

Notes and comments on that and other videos:

https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/1866

http://projects.csail.mit.edu/video/history/aifilms

https://projects.csail.mit.edu/films/aifilms/FilmList.php

Lars said:

>Note that a good number of the programs displayed in these films have been preserved and will run on a PDP-10 emulator. I haven't seen this particular cellular atomaton, but then I haven't looked.

About:

http://projects.csail.mit.edu/video/history/aifilms/05-life....

Here's the audio commentary that goes with that video, in which somebody mentions that he once called Wolfram on never referencing any of Toffoli's or Margolis' work:

https://projects.csail.mit.edu/films/aifilms/Podcasts/05-lif...

I wrote:

>Apparently this cellular automata constructor arm was trying to spell MIT (starting at 0:42), but they ran out of film!

>Is that Edwin Roger Banks rule?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codd%27s_cellular_automaton

>>Three years after Codd's work, Edwin Roger Banks showed a 4-state CA in his PhD thesis that was also capable of universal computation and construction, but again did not implement a self-reproducing machine.[3] John Devore, in his 1973 masters thesis, tweaked Codd's rules to greatly reduce the size of Codd's design, to the extent that it could be implemented in the computers of that time. However, the data tape for self-replication was too long; Devore's original design was later able to complete replication using Golly. Christopher Langton made another tweak to Codd's cellular automaton in 1984 to create Langton's loops, exhibiting self-replication with far fewer cells than that needed for self-reproduction in previous rules, at the cost of removing the ability for universal computation and construction.[4]

>Actually the constructor arm looks like it got interrupted before it could finish spelling out “MIT"! When it stops at 5:10, it prints out some text at the bottom I can’t quite make out.

>Wasn’t there a section in the CAM-6 book on Banks’s rule, which that looks like?

>Or is this one of those almost-infinite-number of monkey rules, that ALMOST spells out “MIT”, but then suddenly halts? ;)

Re: History of Logo

#72

Post by mestelan »

lou1306 wrote: post #30

One of Logo's derivatives, NetLogo [1], seems to be pretty popular among academics as an agent-based modeling tool. It also has a neat browser interpreter. Worth a look, IMO. [1]: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

Their Twitter thread (to be found on the front page) recently announces a block-based interface, similar to Scratch, Snap... Example here: https://t.co/aZKscZAHCS

I am honestly wondering which of these alternatives I should start from, to introduce my 8 and 11 yo to programming. Maybe start obvious (so... Scratch, which is used at their school), then introduce the others as needed?

Re: History of Logo

#73

Post by lakkal »

DonHopkins wrote: post #69
zozbot234 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Looks like $FDED maps to a CHAROUT routine on the Apple ][, so this should print out the character map in an endless loop?

That's right. My "go-to" obnoxious assembly language program I could type in from memory was an infinite loop that screeched the speaker by loading my favorite io address $C030 at an ultrasonic rate. !0: LDA $C030 ! JMP $0

I had a similar one I'd type in hex at $300, something like: CALL -151 300:B5 00 20 ED FD E8 AD 30 C0 4C 00 03 300G (that's a recreation I just worked out, but I think what I used to use was a little different - I forget what technique I used to use to get a semi-random character in the accumulator for it to print)

This filled the screen with scrolling garbage while buzzing the speaker.

Re: History of Logo

#74

Post by dang »

kjs3 wrote: post #36
zozbot234 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? 8-bit assembler was simpler and easier to learn than most programming languages. It kinda had to be, given the constraints on CPU's at the time. (And drawing text or graphics was simply a matter of setting values in a memory-mapped frame buffer. Quite trivial, overall.)

With all due respect, bullshit. Preface: I go back to the 70s in programming. I've done 8-bit on 8080/Z80, 68xx/68hc11, 8051, SMT8, 6502 and 2650. I've taught programming. Let's ignore the challenge of finding an assembler running on a common 8-bit home computer and getting it running and how much the early ones sucked. Let's ignore how little doco there was for those early 8-bits (no internet, remember). Let's ignor…

Hey, could you please not cross into personal attack, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are?

As you know, we're trying hard to avoid that kind of thing here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: History of Logo

#75

Post by AstroJetson »

I love Logo. On of the best program was TLC Logo ( The Lisp Company 1983). They had added some extensions that made it even more powerful. The Book, Thininking about TLC logo with the Turtle cartoons (by Allen, Burke, Johnson) was super easy to learn. It's a shame it never made it to the PC stage.

Re: History of Logo

#76

Post by klotz »

larsbrinkhoff wrote: post #21
DonHopkins wrote: post #17

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. https://donhopkins.com…

Also running on the emulator: PDP-10 Logo, PDP-11 Logo, Applle II Logo. The emulator doesn't support the robot arm yet.

Thank you for doing this, Lars, and thank you for all the amazing historical research and preservation you are doing on the PDP-10 and the origins of operating systems, Lisp, Logo, symbolic math Macsyma, and all of the software and system zeitgeist that produced Logo. We always felt like we were packaging up what our AI lab hacker culture was like, in "mind-sized bites" as Seymour said.

Re: History of Logo

#77

Post by klotz »

mimixco wrote: post #3

LOGO changed my life! When I learned it as a kid, it made me realize that software was "castles in the sky" and you could do anything you want. 41 years later and a career programmer, I'm now using Lisp in our most modern product. :-) I'll always be grateful to Papert for his work in creating and teaching LOGO.

Which version of Logo and which Lisp? Have you read SICP? Hal Abelson is responsible for getting Logo out of MIT and into the world of the Apple II, and with GJS for SICP. Logo and Lisp connections go way back though, to it's inception with BBN and MIT people.

Re: History of Logo

#78

Post by klotz »

DonHopkins wrote: post #63
kjs3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, bullshit. Preface: I go back to the 70s in programming. I've done 8-bit on 8080/Z80, 68xx/68hc11, 8051, SMT8, 6502 and 2650. I've taught programming. Let's ignore the challenge of finding an assembler running on a common 8-bit home computer and getting it running and how much the early ones sucked. Let's ignore how little doco there was for those early 8-bits (no internet, remember). Let's ignor…

]INT >CALL -151 *F666G !0: INX 0000- E8 INX ! TXA 0001- ·8A TXA ! JSR $FDED 0002- 20 ED FD JSR $FDED ! JMP $0 0005- 4C 00 00 JMP $0000 ! BRK 0008- 00 BRK https://www.callapple.org/vintage-apple-computers/apple-ii/a...

Thank you Don! I was going to comment that I wrote a 6502 assembler in Logo for the Apple II and the C64 and it shipped with it and it was documented how to write in assembler. I was hoping to hear some kid learned 6502 assembler from it. That counts you out since you already knew 6502 assembler.

Re: History of Logo

#79

Post by klotz »

DonHopkins wrote: post #64

Terrapin Logo for the Apple ][ and C64 came with a 6502 assembler written in Logo by Leigh Klotz, that they used to write Logo primitives (for controlling the turtle, etc). It would be ambitious to make a self hosting 6502 Logo meta assembler, by porting the entire 6502 assembly language Logo source code to the 6502 Logo Assembler! Leigh, wasn't the assembler that you used for the original Apple ][ version of Logo wr…

Quite the resource list, Don! You should put in links to the Adventure game you wrote for the C64 Logo, and we listed you by name and age.

The assembler was already chosen, probably by Steve Hain or Gary Drescher. I believe it was CROSS. It annoyed me that I would get phase errors if I edited during the first pass which was like 10 or 15 minutes at night so I wrote a one-pass assembler in MacLisp, but it was slower to finish than the first pass of CROSS so I translated it to Logo and Hal said to put it on the utilities disk. I can't remember who added .output and .input but Logo had had them before the Apple II, I think 11Logo had it.

Re: History of Logo

#80

Post by klotz »

nicetryguy wrote: post #31

Aaaand once again Gary Kildall gets left out of history. While CEO of Digital Research, the largest software company in the world at the time (besides IBM), he did an entire implementation himself! DR Logo had some innovative graphical features. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4P6MDuk3Zk

Gary Killdall tried to buy Terrapin. It was unfavorable terms and I didn't agree. He went away mad and wrote something in C an implementation of what looked like Logo but I don't know how he choose to implement it. I remember him talking about structs of various sorts at one point, instead of using lists so I assume he was concerned about efficiency. I never had a discussion with them about their interest in pedagogy so I can't comment.
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