From: Chad Perrin <code@...>
Date: 2011-04-16T00:37:37+09:00
Subject: Re: Chad Perrin

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On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 09:35:40AM +0900, Vincent Manis wrote:
> On 2011-04-14, at 17:10, Chad Perrin wrote:
> >
> > For the record, I agree: Logo, at least in the UCBLogo
> > implementation, is a "serious" programming language.  Its limitations
> > as a language suitable to "real world" use are entirely a result of
> > the fact that Logo was a victim of its own success; it did so well in
> > the '80s as an educational language for young children that everybody
> > assumed that was all it could do, ignoring its robust capabilities.
> > It is, in fact, in many ways the LISP originally envisioned by
> > McCarthy (which is, in fact, in many ways less interesting than what
> > Common Lisp and Scheme have become -- but is still an underrated
> > language).
>=20
> Indeed. The original designers of Logo, Danny Bobrow and Wally
> Feurzeig, explicitly described Logo as `baby Lisp'. I was involved in
> that effort a bit, and ended up producing an implementation of Logo,
> and teaching teachers how to use it for teaching purposes. That latter
> part soured me quite a lot on teaching computer science in public
> schools. Most of the teachers couldn't see any other purpose to Logo
> than manipulating the turtle, and they ended up seeing Logo as a kind
> of horrible drawing program. In fact, I stopped getting interest from
> teachers on this subject at almost exactly the time the original Mac
> and MacPaint were released.

The sad fact is that most public school teachers (including public
universities) have little interest in learning and less imagination.

I do not speak of private school teachers because I haven't attended a
public school.  The main effect of the vast majority of classes I have
attended in schools of various types has been to undermine my love for
learning, though.  I finally figured out that to really learn something
while in school, one must do it on one's own time.

By the way, Logo was my second programming language -- and it rescued me
from the horrors of my first language, BASIC.


>
> The wonderful stuff in Brian Harvey's _Computer Science Logo Style_ was
> totally beyond these teachers. (By the way, if you look on his website,
> you can download all three volumes of this series. Even for those who
> have no interest in Logo, these are fascinating books.
> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh).=20

I've worked my way through bits of Harvey's book, off and on, over the
years.  It's an interesting approach.  I definitely recommend it as a
Logo for Grown-Ups series of books.


>=20
> Ruby and Logo share a certain flavor, including a syntax that is just a
> little bit hazy :). I kind of wish I were still teaching teachers, it
> would be fun to teach them Ruby.

I'd love to do that, too, but I frankly have no idea how I'd put myself
in such a position.

--=20
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]

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