Ray Kurzweil makes an appearance in Episode 17 talking about AI: https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/f3fc8a5ce91dfb847a4f91eed7ddb184
Programming Language choices: Pascal, LOGO, Forth, Prolog, C (1986) [video]
21–30 of 35 posts
Re: Programming Language choices: Pascal, LOGO, Forth, Prolog, C (1986) [video]
#22Logo is not an acronym. It's an abbreviation of Logos.
It's stylized as "LOGO" in Papert's 1981 book Mindstorms and in papers written by Papert in the 1970s.
Re: Programming Language choices: Pascal, LOGO, Forth, Prolog, C (1986) [video]
#23Logo is not an acronym. It's an abbreviation of Logos.
Idk why but even highly knowledgeable people capitalize random tech words. In the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate, Tanenbaum regularly calls it LINUX (maybe a habit because UNIX is smallcaps'd per the trademark?). Lisp is often called LISP (check Wikiquote for ample examples), although this is forgivable since Lisp really did used to be an all-caps acronym.
Typewriters and their intrinsically limited rich-text capabilities encouraged that all-caps use for distinction.
In the case of Unix, it was trademarked as all-caps, for some reason ('Multics' was not) - so for Linux it may have seemed to follow for consistence.
Re: Programming Language choices: Pascal, LOGO, Forth, Prolog, C (1986) [video]
#24Logo is not an acronym. It's an abbreviation of Logos.
Logic Oreinted, Graphic Oriented
Re: Programming Language choices: Pascal, LOGO, Forth, Prolog, C (1986) [video]
#25I used to enjoy LOGO when I was a kid. Used Microworlds EX to make games. Shame it has fallen out of favor as an educational tool. Taught me a lot about scripting and paying attention to syntax.
Have you seen the adult version? It's called NetLOGO and comes in both 2D and 3D forms. It is used for multi-agent modeling, which makes it ideal for things like the flocking algorithm that has multiple points all doing their own things based on a small set of rules. https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/index.shtml
Although NetLogo can be considered a Logo, there are some important differences, such as:
- focus on agent-based modelling (feels more like a DSL to me)
- lexical scoping of local variables and inputs instead of dynamic scoping
- no “word” data type (similar to symbols in Lisp) - instead, NetLogo uses strings in most cases where words would be used in Logo
- control structures (if, while, etc.) are special forms instead of ordinary functions
- NetLogo is a Lisp 1, while Logo has been a Lisp 2 (separate namespaces for values and functions)
See http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/programming.html#co... for a more detailed comparison.
Despite its educational focus and reputation as a language for children, UCBLogo (a dialect of Logo from 1992 intended for being a “minimum Logo standard”) seems to be quite advanced and also has some “adult” features (partially derived from its Lisp heritage), such as higher-order functions, eval & apply, recursion, anonymous functions (or rather something similar called “templates”) and macros.
However, NetLogo feels more like a modern version of Logo without some of the weird/unfamiliar stuff (like dynamic scoping and words). It is heavily used and taught at https://www.complexityexplorer.org , so if anyone is curious enough I recommend taking a look at their free courses/tutorials such as “Fundamentals of NetLogo” or “Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling” - they are probably the best resources out there to learn NetLogo.
Re: Programming Language choices: Pascal, LOGO, Forth, Prolog, C (1986) [video]
#26wait. there was a prolog for the zx spectrum?
"Micro-Prolog" apparently. Strange kind of Prolog without parentheses and with an "if" operator:
X part-of bicycle if X part-of wheel
P.S. From Jtsummers' link, I realise Micro Prolog was the precursor of LPA Prolog, by the same company (LPA - Logic Programming Associates Ltd):
Re: Programming Language choices: Pascal, LOGO, Forth, Prolog, C (1986) [video]
#27Jump to 13:05 (also shown on the right menu) for an intro to those languages. The page has a link to "RUN SOFTWARE". The link opens a 'BBC Micro' emulator that runs the software shown on the thumbnail. You can edit the program in all its 1980's Acorn Basic glory. Btw, "Acorn" is the "A" in "ARM", as in billions of CPUs today, and the BBC Micro is the inspiration behind the Raspberry Pi.
>"Acorn" is the "A" in "ARM"
Used to be, before they changed it to "Advanced".
Re: Programming Language choices: Pascal, LOGO, Forth, Prolog, C (1986) [video]
#28Good ol' C, still in the 'most used' group 40 years later. The other four? Not so much today.
And they missed assembly, COBOL and BASIC which probably was the other 49% of professional programming. Though they may have had a different context in mind when they wrote this.
Re: Programming Language choices: Pascal, LOGO, Forth, Prolog, C (1986) [video]
#29Jump to 13:05 (also shown on the right menu) for an intro to those languages. The page has a link to "RUN SOFTWARE". The link opens a 'BBC Micro' emulator that runs the software shown on the thumbnail. You can edit the program in all its 1980's Acorn Basic glory. Btw, "Acorn" is the "A" in "ARM", as in billions of CPUs today, and the BBC Micro is the inspiration behind the Raspberry Pi.
>"Acorn" is the "A" in "ARM" Used to be, before they changed it to "Advanced".
Used to be before they decided it didn't stand for anything.
Re: Programming Language choices: Pascal, LOGO, Forth, Prolog, C (1986) [video]
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Idk why but even highly knowledgeable people capitalize random tech words. In the Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate, Tanenbaum regularly calls it LINUX (maybe a habit because UNIX is smallcaps'd per the trademark?). Lisp is often called LISP (check Wikiquote for ample examples), although this is forgivable since Lisp really did used to be an all-caps acronym.
Typewriters and their intrinsically limited rich-text capabilities encouraged that all-caps use for distinction. In the case of Unix, it was trademarked as all-caps, for some reason ('Multics' was not) - so for Linux it may have seemed to follow for consistence.
Plus, early programming seems to have been all upper case.
It wouldn't be surprising to me if people just conflated programming with upper case, and by extension the names used.