taylor (12/31/82)
I must have seen a different version of LOGO to everyone here who raves about it as a great language (specially for kids...!!!) The version that I saw was about as obscure a syntax as they come! While I might very well be shot down and stewed for this, I still say that BASIC is the best language to teach a child...it's a hell of a lot closer to human language (remember that??? Recall that the Computer is a TOOL! A Hell of a sophisticated one, but a tool nonetheless. Therefore it should adjust to US, not the other way around!! I mean, it seems that my computer should be able to accept the language that I use, and learn it, rather than making me learn a NEW language so that I can communicate with it!! I mean HEY!!! Who is the boss?? US or IT? *sigh* enough. ) Obviously, I think that ENGLISH (remember that too??) is the best language...since the kids are struggling with it anyway...but in the mean- time I would settle for a language that is 1) interpretive (with a compilation option...) and 2) reasonably mnemonic, in that the programmer does not need a sheaf of notes by his/her side before even contemplating using the computer. I know that this will have many flames turned up high. No Problem. In fact I encourage the mail...(but, perhaps, not the posted articles...the newsgroup is a bit cluttered as it is!) Happy New Year etcetera!!! -- Dave Taylor sdcsvax!taylor
dyer (01/01/83)
Regarding the syntax of LOGO, I'm not so crazy about it myself, but from speaking with a friend of mine who is using it in her grade- school classes in place of BASIC, the students don't seem to mind it at all. I think it depends on one's previous experience. My own feeling is that it lacks the utter simplicity of LISP, and I find the ":" convention to use the value of a variable maddening (shades of BLISS!). Nevertheless, it liberates the student from the linear constraints that BASIC imposes, and this is perhaps its most important contribution. Individually named procedures, recursion, an intriguingly consistent treatment of numbers, strings and lists: all pretty high-level stuff, and the kids are eating it up. It's nice to know they're brighter than BASIC assumes.