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History of Logo

escholarship.org

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Re: History of Logo

#41

Post by jecel »

In 1983 I and Fabio Cunha designed a Logo computer with the 6809 processor: http://www.merlintec.com/lsi/pegasus.html

The project evolved into a more advanced 68000 based Smalltalk computer, but I regretted not finishing and releasing the original machine as years later I saw what schools in Brazil were doing with MSX Logo and such. The big mistake in the design was using the same chipset as the TRS-80 Color Computer which had a bunch of needless text and low resolution modes but no nice high resolutions ones.

Re: History of Logo

#42

Post by ken »

kjs3 wrote: post #32
ken wrote: post #6

Logo was a hard pill to swallow in the 1980's. It had some neat features 'on paper' but it was hard to appreciate them because it was agonizingly slow on the computers of the day. It was the first programming experience I ever had where I'd type in my function, and then had to wait a while for the computer to do something to it (it never used the word "compiler"), and then it could run. I remember thinking: this make…

I honestly can't think of anything more "missing the entire point" of a language like Logo than "I could write in assembler faster...".

I was maybe 8 or 9 at the time. I guarantee I missed 'the point' of a lot of things at that age! Shoot me.

Even today, though, if you told me there was a great new programming language, but I had to wait a minute every time I made a change before running my program, I don't imagine I'd be terribly excited to learn it.

Right next to this on HN is a 2014 article by WalterBright that reports "compiler speed matters a lot". What's the last compiler you used that spent 60 seconds compiling a single file?

Re: History of Logo

#43

Post by pvg »

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…

I go back to the 70s in programming.

Like the poster at the start of the subthread, I was a kid with an 8-bitter and my impression of Logo at the time was similar. It was neat, I read some Logo books but it was too slow. For a lot of things, BASIC was too slow as well and so like many self-respecting nerdkids, I learned assembly and used it a lot. This was typical and there were so many of us, we still regularly cross paths in HN threads like this, mumbling 6502 opcodes at each other.

Re: History of Logo

#44

Post by linguistbreaker »

ken wrote: post #6

Logo was a hard pill to swallow in the 1980's. It had some neat features 'on paper' but it was hard to appreciate them because it was agonizingly slow on the computers of the day. It was the first programming experience I ever had where I'd type in my function, and then had to wait a while for the computer to do something to it (it never used the word "compiler"), and then it could run. I remember thinking: this make…

When I was a kid my dad had an Apple II+ and I liked it - definitely don't remember it being slow. MY other two games were Sticky Bear Bop and Defender.

Re: History of Logo

#45

Post by linguistbreaker »

linguistbreaker wrote: post #44
ken wrote: post #6

Logo was a hard pill to swallow in the 1980's. It had some neat features 'on paper' but it was hard to appreciate them because it was agonizingly slow on the computers of the day. It was the first programming experience I ever had where I'd type in my function, and then had to wait a while for the computer to do something to it (it never used the word "compiler"), and then it could run. I remember thinking: this make…

When I was a kid my dad had an Apple II+ and I liked it - definitely don't remember it being slow. MY other two games were Sticky Bear Bop and Defender.

fwiw I was 6 and i thought it was a game and enjoyed it.

Re: History of Logo

#46

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

Off topic: This site has a very nice UI. No frills. Almost soothing. Now i have to read that, and the rest of the site has moved to the top of my Tsundoku stack because of that. Does anybody else feel like that, too?

Re: History of Logo

#47

Post by tingletech »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #46

Off topic: This site has a very nice UI. No frills. Almost soothing. Now i have to read that, and the rest of the site has moved to the top of my Tsundoku stack because of that. Does anybody else feel like that, too?

Thanks! My group at work produces that site [0], and our design group [1] worked on the UI too.

[0] https://cdlib.org/services/pad/ [1] https://cdlib.org/services/uxdesign/

Re: History of Logo

#48

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

tingletech wrote: post #47
LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #46

Off topic: This site has a very nice UI. No frills. Almost soothing. Now i have to read that, and the rest of the site has moved to the top of my Tsundoku stack because of that. Does anybody else feel like that, too?

Thanks! My group at work produces that site [0], and our design group [1] worked on the UI too. [0] https://cdlib.org/services/pad/ [1] https://cdlib.org/services/uxdesign/

I really like it. It is so unobtrusive. At first i've been surprised because i disabled in-browser Pdf-reading, but it almost looked like a pdf-reader. All proportioned and positioned just right, no fiddling necessary. And not laggy either. This is how it should be! (For me.)

Re: History of Logo

#49

Post by tingletech »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #48
tingletech wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! My group at work produces that site [0], and our design group [1] worked on the UI too. [0] https://cdlib.org/services/pad/ [1] https://cdlib.org/services/uxdesign/

I really like it. It is so unobtrusive. At first i've been surprised because i disabled in-browser Pdf-reading, but it almost looked like a pdf-reader. All proportioned and positioned just right, no fiddling necessary. And not laggy either. This is how it should be! (For me.)

it is a pdf reader, our own fork of PDF.js https://github.com/eScholarship/pdfjs-embed2

Re: History of Logo

#50

Post by _reza »

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/

Santafe institute's 'Introduction to Complexity' online course uses NetLogo to run simulations.
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