[net.lang] LOGO vs. Pascal

wrongLogin (03/09/83)

This is mainly a reaction to Mark Horton's comments on LOGO in the
"LOGO Summary" article.  Mark argued that he preferred Pascal because
(among other things) it hides "the fact that programs are edited,
compiled, linked and run".  I would strongly argue that such details
certainly SHOULD be hidden, at least to begin with!  It seems clear to
me that an interactive environment is best for the learning programmer,
since it is so easy to explore, to test small changes in your program
or try out new language features.  I think the unfortunate popularity
of BASIC is largely due to its interactiveness.  In addition, the
process of interactively debugging a program really makes you think
through the code from the machines point of view, and I've always
thought that "hand simulation" of code is a crucial step in developing
any program.
	Seymour Papert brings all of this to life in his wonderful book
"Mindstorms", which I would recommend to any parent.
	Admittedly, my target population (non-professionals) may be
different from Mark's (although he did mention his son), but even for
professionals, it might be a good idea to really get them comfortable
with a language/environment like LOGO before throwing them into the
more "real" (unfortunately) world of edit-compile-link-run languages
like Pascal.

Neal McBurnett, cbosg!druxv!neal