undefined | Better HN

0 pointselric6y ago0 comments

Logo on the C64 was one of the foundational tools in my programming journey. It was part of a computing class in primary school, I think when we were 9 years old. For many in the class, this was a first opportunity to mess around with a computer (almost no one had any kind of computer at home back then).

Getting that little triangular turtle to draw the shape of my house, simply by telling it how far to move and which way to turn, ended up being a life altering moment.

I don't know if it's possible to enthrall children with it these days. The graphics must seem absolutely bland and boring compared to many things children these days get to tinker with.

0 comments

4 comments · 2 top-level

ido6y ago· 2 in thread

We got started with logo (on DOS PCs) at the same age in my school. It took me a long time to even realize it had anything to do with programming, just seemed like a wierd and cumbersome drawing program (compared to PC Paintbrush for example).

A couple years later I started messing around with QBasic & that really pulled me in even tho it took me a long while to learn even the basics.

Computer classes in school (until high school at least) seemed to have been generally be taught by teachers slightly less computer-literate than more advanced pupils in their class.

jecel6y ago

When I was testing a Logo implementation that had been released, I called my much younger cousin to look at it since he had been so good at Logo back in school that they had made him the "class monitor" the following year.

I quickly typed in code to draw a recursive tree and ran it. His reaction was "What?!?! You mean Logo is a programming language like the Pascal I learned at the university?"

Very sad.

ido6y ago

Honestly what can be expected when the teachers aren't programmers and learned it just before the pupils themselves? Which I guess may be sorta forgivable in the early 90s when there were few programmers (especially in the global periphery) and even fewer that were both programmers & teachers.

sideshowb6y ago

I don't know yet (my child is still far too young for logo) that said I grew up in an era spanning from frogger and handheld lcd tennis to all the BBC games to lemmings and Super Mario, any of which had better graphics than I could make in logo, but they lacked the thrill of creating things for myself that I got from the latter.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse