I was eight years old when Logo taught me that the computer does what I tell it do to - no more, no less... Everything I learned ever since is just implementation details.
Well, except for those cosmic rays ;)
Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)
51–60 of 87 posts
Re: Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)
#52Wow. I didn't know Microsoft had a "metal" company logo.
Re: Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)
#53I recently discovered that the most popular tool used by scientists who do research using agent based modeling is based on Logo: https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/
Re: Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)
#54500+ pages... Colossal !
Of which more than half (of what I've skimmed through, at least) are ads. Makes FB at 1/4 ad content seem even reasonable.
Whenever I browse scans of old magazines like this I find the ads have a real historical value. Many are a rich snapshot: the state of the art (for that publication's audience), pricing, language/vernacular, style, and even hints at how business was done (eg phone numbers, PO boxes, SASEs, shipping costs, etc.) I'm not quite so optimistic about the long term value of the hyper personalized Taboola chum box :/
Re: Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)
#55For all the Logo fans out here, here are some more Logo resources: 1. IBM PC Logo executable and manual (1983): https://winworldpc.com/product/ibm-logo/100 2. Atari Logo executable and manuals (1983): https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Logo 3. JSLogo (2009-2021): https://www.calormen.com/jslogo/ 4. Logo Exchange (1982-1999): https://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/resources/nlx/ 5. Matrix bridge to Libera Chat…
To add to that, Brian Harvey's homepage has three books about Logo for free: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/#csls
Re: Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)
#56Was this magazine really 500 pages thick?
Re: Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)
#57I enjoyed a bit of Unix and C bashing here ( ): "Unix, C, and Pascal may be excellent teaching and development tools, but they may not be so good for commercial production work." ( ): https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1982-08/page/n19/m...
That was probably true back then. My understanding is that Unix wasn't ready for commercial production work until the late 80s at least.
Sun launched in 1982, went public in 1986 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems). One might presume that its customers thought it ready for commercial production work by the mid 80s at least...
Re: Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ads in a publication like Byte (or many of the other computer magazines of the day) were a different beast. Quite often, they were the only way to learn about new products and the products advertised were relevant to the audience of the magazine. It is a far cry from the mass market advertising found on Facebook (or television, or radio).
Yep. The time when print magazines and ads were actually interesting.
They still are FASCINATING. People just trying anything. Personal testimonials, sexual imagery, crazy far out futuristic art, it's all there in the ads.
Re: Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)
#59A story about Logo:
Thirty years ago, driven by poverty and lack of opportunities, me and my family illegally crossed the border from Tijuana into San Diego. We had some friends in Pasadena who received us in a spare bedroom while we settled. Since I was eleven years old, I was enrolled in the sixth grade of the local elementary school.
The teacher (Ms Castro) was incredibly gracious with this tiny Mexican who didn't speak a word of english. I was only required to participate in math and art clases (Also, it seemed like Mexican fifth grade math was more advanced than California‘s so I looked like a genius ;)) and on some ESL courses the school offered while skipping classed that required English.
Anyway, there was this one computer in ms Castro‘s classroom. It was an Apple machine, but I could not tell you which one because this was the first computer I ever touched. So the teacher instructed some other hispanic kid to show me how to turn the computer on and "play" with this toy program called Logo so I have something to do while the others kids are in class. I spent hours and hours each day with this thing; fast forward a couple months and I was not only drawing but writing programs that produced musical animations to the astonishments of the entire class.
It was a great experience --pretty much the only positive experience we had while in the US--. Five months later we had to get back, and I wouldn't have access to a personal computer for another 9 years. I always wondered what would've happened if we stayed.
Anyway, Logo was my introduction to computing and helped my keep my sanity during my five months as an illegal immigrant.
Re: Byte Magazine Volume 07 Number 08 – Logo (1982)
#60I used Logo while taking Algebra II in high school. I remember seeing this issue of Byte at the time and I realized hey, I can plot functions! Our CS club had Logo for the Apple II machines they had and away I went! I learned very quickly not to plot every single point, how to determine how much to plot based off of display resolution, and get an idea for what your dx should be. I also explored lots of polynomial graphs we'd never get to see in class. It was fun!