What Is a Logo-Like Language?
maxhallinan.com
What Is a Logo-Like Language?
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Re: What Is a Logo-Like Language?
#2Python offers a nice Logo-like environment using "import turtle".
Re: What Is a Logo-Like Language?
#3 I do not think of myself as a closure or a functor, unlike the Logo programmer and the turtle, but the elements of a language are features of a world I inhabit:
Re: What Is a Logo-Like Language?
#4Logo appeared in a puzzle in this year's MIT Mystery Hunt: https://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/2019/puzzle/turtle_power.html
Fun puzzle. Took me back...
Re: What Is a Logo-Like Language?
#5Logo is actually more than just a toy language for turtle graphics. It's a serious language with a lot of inspiration from Lisp (although not using sexps).
Re: What Is a Logo-Like Language?
#6Logo is actually more than just a toy language for turtle graphics. It's a serious language with a lot of inspiration from Lisp (although not using sexps).
I seem to recall at least one Logo I used as a kid had an "advanced mode" that in hindsight boiled down to S-Expressions and several more Lisp functions added to its standard library. Wish I could recall which Logo that was. Maybe one of the later LCSI builds (Apple Logo or IBM Logo), but possibly some version of Lego's TC Logo?
Re: What Is a Logo-Like Language?
#7>Does this mean that the use of the language is more important than the language itself?
The answer is a resounding yes. C became popular because it is the native language of Unix. It was Rails that made Ruby popular. JavaScript is popular because it is implemented by all the browsers. Objective-C became popular because of iOS, and similarly with Swift. Visual Basic was one of the most popular languages for a time because it made Windows GUI programming easier. The ecosystem and use of a language is far more important than the language itself.
Re: What Is a Logo-Like Language?
#8I rewrote a Logo implementation in JavaScript in order to make a map of the train network in Taiwan.
http://peterburk.github.io/tra/
Existing maps were not bilingual, which caused me to take the wrong train and miss a concert. When I decided to redraw it, I wanted the map to not only have subway-style graphics, but also make the distance between the points be proportional to the time it takes a local train to travel between those stations.
If anyone else would like to use Logo to teach kids programming, and make time-proportional subway maps for other cities, please get in touch! I think it'd be a fun learning exercise.
Re: What Is a Logo-Like Language?
#9I rewrote a Logo implementation in JavaScript in order to make a map of the train network in Taiwan. http://peterburk.github.io/tra/ Existing maps were not bilingual, which caused me to take the wrong train and miss a concert. When I decided to redraw it, I wanted the map to not only have subway-style graphics, but also make the distance between the points be proportional to the time it takes a local train to travel…
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Re: What Is a Logo-Like Language?
#10Rebol and Red [1] are the only languages that I know which acknowledge having Logo heritage in their design and philosophy. Speaking from my experience, I can tell that working in them is indeed a deeply embodied microworld-like experience, they way author describes.
Manipulating homoiconic structures feels highly spatial, as if you're molding a clay with your own hands, or rather palpating the Urschleim. High polymorphism and rich standard library remove the mental burden and quite literally let you think in the language (hi mr. Iversion! [2]) and feel embodied in its runtime. Symbolic programming directly parallels the magic of natural language, its eerie occult power of controlling the world by non-physical means - remember how Sussman spoke about linguistic abstraction and magic incantations in SICP introduction?
In fact, in Red and Rebol everything is a little language (an embedded DSL), from metal to meta, and programs in them are this beautiful symbiogenetic ooze of micro-formats, slangs and linguistic DNA strands, from which your program slowly emerges [3]. Ultimately, you and your code become of one mind and body, stitched together by problem-solving intent. "I'm not moving the turtle, I am the turtle that moves!".
Even thinking about it gives me heebie-jeebies and brings to mind Tsutomu Nihei's Blame! [4] ever-growing City structure and Frictional Games' SOMA craziness [5]. Never experienced anything like that with any other programming language (except maybe for Forth and Lisp, but they are Red and Rebol ancestors too!).
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On a slightly different note: there's a "Computer science Logo style" book series [6].
[1]: https://www.red-lang.org/
[2]: https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm
[3]: https://meltingasphalt.com/a-codebase-is-an-organism/