>Does this mean that the use of the language is more important than the language itself?<p>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.
Does anybody still have a copy of the file from the MIT-AI Lab PDP-10 called "AI: HUMOR; LOGO TURTLE" or something like that? I haven't been able to find a copy myself, but I remember reading it and have confirmed that it existed, and that it was published in SIGART around 1982.<p>It was Leigh Klotz's sarcastic response to a Defense Department questionnaire to Terrapin about how their technology could be used to kill people.<p>He proposed deploying a swarm of thousands of LOGO turtles to crawl around the battlefield in mesmerizing geometric patterns, and stab the enemy with a quick succession of PENUP and PENDOWN commands (proving once again that the pen is mightier than the sword).<p>Cybernetic Zoo: A history of cybernetic animals and early robots: 1969 – The Logo Turtle – Seymour Papert et al (Sth African/American):<p><a href="http://cyberneticzoo.com/cyberneticanimals/1969-the-logo-turtle-seymour-papert-marvin-minsky-et-al-american/" rel="nofollow">http://cyberneticzoo.com/cyberneticanimals/1969-the-logo-tur...</a><p>Logo's Yellow Turtle: First programmed in 1970. Built at MIT AI Lab:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeFhFPNO8hc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeFhFPNO8hc</a><p>Logo Update, Volume 4, Number 3 - Spring 1996:<p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20120904211432/http://el.media.mit.edu:80/logo-foundation/pubs/logoupdate/v4n3.html" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20120904211432/http://el.media.mi...</a>
Logo 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).
The book Turtle Geometry [1] by Harold Abelson of SICP fame is a pretty cool exploration of mathematics all the way up to non-euclidean geometry using turtle graphics.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0262510375" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificia...</a>
I rewrote a Logo implementation in JavaScript in order to make a map of the train network in Taiwan.<p><a href="http://peterburk.github.io/tra/" rel="nofollow">http://peterburk.github.io/tra/</a><p>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.<p>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.
Rebol 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.<p>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 <i>think</i> 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?<p>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 <i>moving</i> the turtle, I <i>am</i> the turtle that moves!".<p>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!).<p>--<p>On a slightly different note: there's a "Computer science Logo style" book series [6].<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.red-lang.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.red-lang.org/</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://meltingasphalt.com/a-codebase-is-an-organism/" rel="nofollow">https://meltingasphalt.com/a-codebase-is-an-organism/</a><p>[4]: <a href="https://myanimelist.net/manga/149/Blame" rel="nofollow">https://myanimelist.net/manga/149/Blame</a><p>[5]: <a href="https://somagame.com/" rel="nofollow">https://somagame.com/</a><p>[6]: <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/exploring-logo" rel="nofollow">https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/exploring-logo</a>
While Processing isn't logo-like in syntax it is logo-like in intention as in it tries to make it very easy for users to get graphics on to screen.<p>Processing is java-based, but it has spawned both a js verison 'p5.js' and a python version 'processing.py'.<p><a href="https://processing.org/" rel="nofollow">https://processing.org/</a>
<a href="https://p5js.org/" rel="nofollow">https://p5js.org/</a>
<a href="https://py.processing.org/" rel="nofollow">https://py.processing.org/</a>
Regarding<p>...the elements of a language are features of a world I inhabit:<p>Environments are values floating above my head. I have an urge to glance up when I’m thinking about what’s in scope. A closure is a one-way tunnel or pipe or wormhole back into the function environment. But the program itself can’t flow through the pipe. Asynchronous control flow is a stream that I imagine myself floating down. I think about where the stream will take me. Functors are giant structures, like a sculpture by Richard Serra. Functor operations act like cranes, helping me to move around those structures.<p>27 years ago I began working on a programming language in which computational abstractions had concrete animated analogs [1]. ToonTalk was my attempt to make a Logo for the 90s. You programmed in a virtual world where you trained robots to put things in boxes, give birds messages to deliver, etc. The mappings are: computation: city, actor or process or object: house, methods: robots, method preconditions: contents of thought bubble, method actions: actions taught to robot, tuples or messages or vectors: boxes, comparison tests: scales, actor spawning: loaded trucks, actor termination: bombs, constants: numbers, text, and pictures,
channel transmit capabilities: birds, channel receive capabilities: nests, program storage: notebooks.<p>ToonTalk became free and open source 12 years ago. 5 years ago I had time to re-implement much of it as a web app [2]. But as Don Hopkins wrote - I'm focussed now on adding AI to Snap!<p>[1] <a href="http://www.toontalk.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.toontalk.com</a>
[2] <a href="https://toontalk.github.io/ToonTalk/" rel="nofollow">https://toontalk.github.io/ToonTalk/</a>
We wrote a 3D version of Apple Logo [1] and we're going to be rolling out a tutorial for it for kids + running classes...<p>[1] <a href="https://paleotronic.com/software/microm8/help/micrologo/" rel="nofollow">https://paleotronic.com/software/microm8/help/micrologo/</a>
Logo appeared in a puzzle in this year's MIT Mystery Hunt: <a href="https://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/2019/puzzle/turtle_power.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/2019/puzzle/turtle_power.html</a><p>Fun puzzle. Took me back...
<p><pre><code> 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:
</code></pre>
Here is the main difference between Logo and other languages. It’s called “Embodied Cognition” in academia.
Ahhh... I remember LOGO on Apple ][e's Apple donated to the elementary school I attended.<p>Random Q: Why was that light on Apple's keyboard invariably uncomfortably hot?