PENUP
August 1, 2016 12:41 PM Subscribe
Seymour Papert, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Logo Foundation went PENUP today. Many of us who learned programming in the 1980s started with LOGO, which spawned other langauges like StarLogo. Today, its spiritual successor is probably Scratch.
.
If you're feeling nostalgic, and you have Python on your puter, do an "import turtle"
posted by ocschwar at 12:47 PM on August 1, 2016 [8 favorites]
If you're feeling nostalgic, and you have Python on your puter, do an "import turtle"
posted by ocschwar at 12:47 PM on August 1, 2016 [8 favorites]
Somehow . is not enough. I feel like I need to make an elaborate, iterative, multicolored pattern of dots, but I just don't have it in me. Somehow this is just so sad. I guess I'm a nerd of a certain age.
. ▷
posted by The Bellman at 12:50 PM on August 1, 2016 [10 favorites]
. ▷
posted by The Bellman at 12:50 PM on August 1, 2016 [10 favorites]
🐢
posted by asperity at 12:52 PM on August 1, 2016 [13 favorites]
posted by asperity at 12:52 PM on August 1, 2016 [13 favorites]
Papert was also very important in the field of artificial intelligence. Together with Minsky, he blew up neural network research for a generation with his work 'Perceptrons' (where they proved that the simple Perceptron could only solve linearly separable functions).
posted by leotrotsky at 12:52 PM on August 1, 2016 [13 favorites]
posted by leotrotsky at 12:52 PM on August 1, 2016 [13 favorites]
.
posted by Smart Dalek at 12:55 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by Smart Dalek at 12:55 PM on August 1, 2016
△
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
DOT [x,y]
posted by otherchaz at 12:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by otherchaz at 12:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
One of the first minds that will be reconstructed by the Singularity.
posted by sammyo at 1:08 PM on August 1, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 1:08 PM on August 1, 2016 [3 favorites]
I wrote out the code to make a square, I still remember it. A friend of mine had somehow built a casino program in Logo that played blackjack, I remember he got to store it on a floppy instead of simply having to recopy his code every time.
.
posted by Hactar at 1:09 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by Hactar at 1:09 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
Interesting to find out from MIT Media Lab release that he had worked directly with Jean Piaget in Switzerland. I grew up with a mom who was a child psychologist so Piaget was a household name. And we had Logo on our Apple ][+ -- it wasn't my first computer language, Basic was, but my younger brother used it a lot.
posted by larrybob at 1:11 PM on August 1, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by larrybob at 1:11 PM on August 1, 2016 [6 favorites]
I think learning LOGO in elementary school is what got me into computers in the first place.
PU
posted by charred husk at 1:21 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
PU
posted by charred husk at 1:21 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
Many of us who learned programming in the 1980s started with LOGO.... Today, its spiritual successor is probably Scratch.
Yes, indeed! I first learned about programming using Logo as a kid, and now my own kids take summer classes on programming -- and their first exposure was a couple of years ago in a class using Scratch.
The Science Museum of Minnesota used to have a big system with a turtle-shaped robot under a large (8'x8'??) plastic dome, which you could program in Logo via a keypad....if anyone would leave you along at the controls long enough, which I never actually saw happen. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 1:22 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yes, indeed! I first learned about programming using Logo as a kid, and now my own kids take summer classes on programming -- and their first exposure was a couple of years ago in a class using Scratch.
The Science Museum of Minnesota used to have a big system with a turtle-shaped robot under a large (8'x8'??) plastic dome, which you could program in Logo via a keypad....if anyone would leave you along at the controls long enough, which I never actually saw happen. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 1:22 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
One summer in the mid eighties I went with my mom to get photocopies made at a Xerox store in Guadalajara.
They had some computers running logo, and a sale for a 2 week, 20 hour a week, Logo class. My mother signed me up on the spot, what better way to get some peace from an 8 year old already bored one week into summer break.
I had been a kind of artsy, kind of science nerd kind of kid. I used to make ASCII art by filling cells in a spreadsheet at my uncle's work, and loved playing with a family friends commodore 64 based synthesizer. But got bored to death when someone tried to teach me programming.
Logo was different, it just felt right. I would imagine the turtle in its little 2d world, picture what I wanted it to do, and the translation to code just happened. The first time the turtle did what moments before only existed in my imagination was awesome. I think big chunks of my brain got rewired that summer.
Once I discovered random number generator, I would make generative art to keep me hypnotized for hours.
We could not afford a computer for another 8 years, so I taught myself programming at the Xerox shop, then at the the commodore 64s they had in the electronics department of the grocery store.
I've been an autodidact ever since, and managed to make it from that two weeks of logo at a copy shop to software engineer at Google, all with a humanities design from a not so good school.
So yeah, mission accomplished with that little toy educational programming language, and the crazy body-sytonic reasoning theories of computer education.
.
posted by Doroteo Arango II at 1:22 PM on August 1, 2016 [45 favorites]
They had some computers running logo, and a sale for a 2 week, 20 hour a week, Logo class. My mother signed me up on the spot, what better way to get some peace from an 8 year old already bored one week into summer break.
I had been a kind of artsy, kind of science nerd kind of kid. I used to make ASCII art by filling cells in a spreadsheet at my uncle's work, and loved playing with a family friends commodore 64 based synthesizer. But got bored to death when someone tried to teach me programming.
Logo was different, it just felt right. I would imagine the turtle in its little 2d world, picture what I wanted it to do, and the translation to code just happened. The first time the turtle did what moments before only existed in my imagination was awesome. I think big chunks of my brain got rewired that summer.
Once I discovered random number generator, I would make generative art to keep me hypnotized for hours.
We could not afford a computer for another 8 years, so I taught myself programming at the Xerox shop, then at the the commodore 64s they had in the electronics department of the grocery store.
I've been an autodidact ever since, and managed to make it from that two weeks of logo at a copy shop to software engineer at Google, all with a humanities design from a not so good school.
So yeah, mission accomplished with that little toy educational programming language, and the crazy body-sytonic reasoning theories of computer education.
.
posted by Doroteo Arango II at 1:22 PM on August 1, 2016 [45 favorites]
Seymour came to speak at Teachers College while I was a student in educational technology there. His talk included him executing a snippet of LOGO code. After writing it out where we could see it, he asked the audience what the code would do when executed. I yelled out "Syntax error!" before I knew what I was saying, and then clapped my hands over my mouth, feeling bad I had called him out. But Seymour was the one who had taught me what "syntax error" means! (And I told him so.)
Good night, sweet prince. I would not be who I am today without you.
.
posted by gusandrews at 1:47 PM on August 1, 2016 [16 favorites]
Good night, sweet prince. I would not be who I am today without you.
.
posted by gusandrews at 1:47 PM on August 1, 2016 [16 favorites]
Via Twitter: Papert quote on teaching mathematics, comparing common school methods to trying to teach dance by drawing diagrams on paper.
posted by larrybob at 1:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by larrybob at 1:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
.
posted by praemunire at 1:59 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by praemunire at 1:59 PM on August 1, 2016
The Collected Writings of Seymour Papert (thus far): The Papert Archives Project project is an ongoing effort to find, transcribe, preserve, and share audio and video of Dr. Papert.
posted by larrybob at 2:01 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by larrybob at 2:01 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
My first computer was an Atari 400 with the horrible membrane keyboard. I was 7 or so. I had heard about logo and the turtle and thought that the Atari came with it pre-installed. I also thought it was magical. Much to my dismay, 'DRAW TURTLE' and 'DRAW TRUCK' only got me familiarized with syntax errors.
.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:28 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:28 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
In architecture graduate school I was handed a copy of "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas" by Papert. It changed how I understood the learning process. And computing languages. And design. And ... well you get the idea. It showed me how software was going to change everything. For me, that was in 1991. He wrote the book in 1980.
.
posted by buffalo at 2:37 PM on August 1, 2016 [4 favorites]
.
posted by buffalo at 2:37 PM on August 1, 2016 [4 favorites]
I can safely say LOGO and repeated viewings of TRON as child set me on my current career path. LOGO was my first experience actually making the computer DO something as opposed to being a passive observer of whatever the software demanded from me. That power, even drawing a silly repeating spirograph thing, was amazing as a child and I got a feeling of magic from it that persists to this day.
posted by mikesch at 3:04 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by mikesch at 3:04 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:05 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:05 PM on August 1, 2016
LOGO was the hook for me. Got a career out of it.
.
posted by user92371 at 3:08 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
.
posted by user92371 at 3:08 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
I think learning LOGO in elementary school is what got me into computers in the first place.
My affinity for learning LOGO during a two-week computing (I think YMCA) day camp is what got my parents to buy our first home computer AND switch me to a school that had computing as part of the elementary school program.
For most people, LOGO ends at pretty turtle pictures, but LOGO list processing was my first introduction to programming languages. I never understood why BASIC made you type in line numbers.
Software Engineering was probably not the expected career path for a young black girl those days.
My affinity for learning LOGO during a two-week computing (I think YMCA) day camp is what got my parents to buy our first home computer AND switch me to a school that had computing as part of the elementary school program.
For most people, LOGO ends at pretty turtle pictures, but LOGO list processing was my first introduction to programming languages. I never understood why BASIC made you type in line numbers.
Software Engineering was probably not the expected career path for a young black girl those days.
forward 1posted by sparklemotion at 3:10 PM on August 1, 2016 [23 favorites]
I literally think the only thing I ever did in Logo was draw a shape, turn the turtle 1 degree, change the color, and draw it again, and then repeat a bunch of times until you have a cool multicolor spiral thingie. I actually didn't realize you could do other stuff with it! But that was kind of fun.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:12 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:12 PM on August 1, 2016
.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:15 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:15 PM on August 1, 2016
.
The Papert paper that had the most direct influence on me as a programmer is probably "Epistemological Pluralism and the Revaluation of the Concrete" which he cowrote with Sherry Turkle. If you've ever felt like "not the right kind of programmer" or "not the right kind of person to program" I recommend you at least give it a skim.
And I wrote Logo as a child. Thank you, Seymour Papert.
posted by brainwane at 3:18 PM on August 1, 2016 [6 favorites]
The Papert paper that had the most direct influence on me as a programmer is probably "Epistemological Pluralism and the Revaluation of the Concrete" which he cowrote with Sherry Turkle. If you've ever felt like "not the right kind of programmer" or "not the right kind of person to program" I recommend you at least give it a skim.
And I wrote Logo as a child. Thank you, Seymour Papert.
posted by brainwane at 3:18 PM on August 1, 2016 [6 favorites]
.
posted by crocomancer at 3:26 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by crocomancer at 3:26 PM on August 1, 2016
There's a ton more you can do with LOGO than graphics.
posted by dmd at 3:41 PM on August 1, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by dmd at 3:41 PM on August 1, 2016 [3 favorites]
.
posted by Alterscape at 4:22 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by Alterscape at 4:22 PM on August 1, 2016
There's a ton more you can do with LOGO than graphics.
I knew almost nothing about Papert's life and I've hardly even used Logo but Brian Harvey was one of my favorite teachers ever so his involvement with the language makes me believe in it.
posted by atoxyl at 4:36 PM on August 1, 2016
I knew almost nothing about Papert's life and I've hardly even used Logo but Brian Harvey was one of my favorite teachers ever so his involvement with the language makes me believe in it.
posted by atoxyl at 4:36 PM on August 1, 2016
Elementary school, an Apple ][, and turtle is how I spent one summer...
PENUP indeed.
posted by caution live frogs at 4:45 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
PENUP indeed.
posted by caution live frogs at 4:45 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
"went PENUP" is the best euphemism for death EVER.
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:31 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:31 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
In the basement of the linguistics building at Stanford, which used to be the CS building before CS got its own crappy building, is a little paper thing to John McCarthy in the office where he was in (now the Symsys folks' office). It goes:
))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
posted by hleehowon at 5:33 PM on August 1, 2016 [6 favorites]
))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
posted by hleehowon at 5:33 PM on August 1, 2016 [6 favorites]
.
posted by Lesser Spotted Potoroo at 5:42 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by Lesser Spotted Potoroo at 5:42 PM on August 1, 2016
A solemn and thankful · for the man who taught so many budding kid programmers about things like loops and recursion. LOGO wasn't just a programming language, it was a way to introduce people to the concepts behind it, and it was definitely what got me started on my own path. Rest in peace - you made waves that are still spiraling outward from the center on an infinite loop of increasing radius.
posted by wanderingmind at 5:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by wanderingmind at 5:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [2 favorites]
.
posted by equalpants at 6:39 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by equalpants at 6:39 PM on August 1, 2016
.
posted by Fibognocchi at 6:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Fibognocchi at 6:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
The turtle moves.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:18 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:18 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by viramamunivar at 7:32 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by viramamunivar at 7:32 PM on August 1, 2016
I still teach my students logo! It's a great way to make the connection between the command you write and what the program executes.
posted by mai at 8:46 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by mai at 8:46 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
It is strange, I was just talking to my near 9 year old son last week about how when I was at school - upper primary school, lower secondary school - I had a chance to do computer programming via a language called LOGO.
I never actually knew Seymour's name until now, but I owe his genius so much. The opportunity to use LOGO to be able to do basic computer coding when I was 12-14 years old is something that has stuck with me for the rest of my life.
The discipline, persistence and logic needed to write a program, to try it out, fix it up, etc ... not only are these things skills in programming - coding, data entry, debugging, etc - but they are skills in life.
To be able to think through a problem, step through ways to try and address it, to observe if things don't go well, then try an alternative or fix your original steps .... these are invaluable skills in just being able to get through life.
And the ability to use LOGO to create ornate Spirograph type patterns on the screen (sometimes in colour!) ... wow.
Mainly due to LOGO I ended up doing what was then called Information Technology Systems right through my VCE in Year 11 and 12. By then I was using BASIC but was able to code and assemble programs which would track inventories and the like.
As an aspiring journalist I probably had no need for IT Systems, but LOGO instilled in me a love of this type of work and what it could create.
Nearly 30 years on and I find myself in an office surrounded by coders and programmers, and even using basic coding and programming to maintain and build parts of our organisation's website, to send out publications and the like.
Coding is so important for kids. And the opportunities to code and to learn coding are so much more widespread than when I was lucky enough to be able to begin my coding journey by programming the LOGO turtle to draw a circle for me.
Repeat 360 [fd 1 rt 1]
PENUP indeed.
posted by chris88 at 8:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
I never actually knew Seymour's name until now, but I owe his genius so much. The opportunity to use LOGO to be able to do basic computer coding when I was 12-14 years old is something that has stuck with me for the rest of my life.
The discipline, persistence and logic needed to write a program, to try it out, fix it up, etc ... not only are these things skills in programming - coding, data entry, debugging, etc - but they are skills in life.
To be able to think through a problem, step through ways to try and address it, to observe if things don't go well, then try an alternative or fix your original steps .... these are invaluable skills in just being able to get through life.
And the ability to use LOGO to create ornate Spirograph type patterns on the screen (sometimes in colour!) ... wow.
Mainly due to LOGO I ended up doing what was then called Information Technology Systems right through my VCE in Year 11 and 12. By then I was using BASIC but was able to code and assemble programs which would track inventories and the like.
As an aspiring journalist I probably had no need for IT Systems, but LOGO instilled in me a love of this type of work and what it could create.
Nearly 30 years on and I find myself in an office surrounded by coders and programmers, and even using basic coding and programming to maintain and build parts of our organisation's website, to send out publications and the like.
Coding is so important for kids. And the opportunities to code and to learn coding are so much more widespread than when I was lucky enough to be able to begin my coding journey by programming the LOGO turtle to draw a circle for me.
Repeat 360 [fd 1 rt 1]
PENUP indeed.
posted by chris88 at 8:59 PM on August 1, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by destructive cactus at 11:36 PM on August 1, 2016
posted by destructive cactus at 11:36 PM on August 1, 2016
The first computer I successfully programmed was an Apple ][ running LOGO interpreter, in a computer club in Warsaw. Two years later, in 1986, when I was 17 years old, I met Seymour Papert in person, in, of all places, Moscow, where my father was working in Polish embassy. Papert was visiting a computer club there. We were allowed to ask questions, and I asked if computers will be eligible to vote someday (which was a loaded question at this place and time). He smiled through his beard and answered... and I can't repeat his exact words, because my English at the time was rudimental, but the interpreter said that "perhaps, if they are eligible for citizenship, and they would have to be recognized as persons first".
I will be always grateful to him for helping me - as well as countless others - to get into computing at this wondrous time.
posted by hat_eater at 2:44 AM on August 2, 2016 [4 favorites]
I will be always grateful to him for helping me - as well as countless others - to get into computing at this wondrous time.
posted by hat_eater at 2:44 AM on August 2, 2016 [4 favorites]
One of Papert's former students is working very much in his vein; Mitch Resnick of the MIT Media Lab. His group is behind Scratch, the programming environment mentioned here that has been so successful in teaching kids to program. Back when I was a student there his group was fooling around with Legos and robotics, their ideas ended up in various iterations of the Lego Mindstorms products. Mitch is a genuinely generous professor and really committed to hands-on learning of computer science for kids. A nice heir to Papert's legacy.
posted by Nelson at 3:21 AM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Nelson at 3:21 AM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]
In the early 1982 as a computer science student at university I scored a part time job working for Texas Instruments teaching free LOGO classes to kids as a way to promote their new personal computer/gaming system. Watching kids discover with delight their ability to control the turtle remains probably my favorite job of all time. I love to imagine that some of those kids are now great coders building cool stuff and I can't even imagine how much more satisfying it is to have had the massive world-wide influence Papert did on so many of us.
.
posted by Lame_username at 7:25 AM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
.
posted by Lame_username at 7:25 AM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]
Installing UCB Logo 6 on a Raspberry Pi right now … and it's much harder than it needs to be. The makefile assumes a lot of old things. Debian's ucblogo package is 5.5, so more than a decade old.
posted by scruss at 9:46 AM on August 2, 2016
posted by scruss at 9:46 AM on August 2, 2016
.
posted by ASeveredHead at 12:28 PM on August 2, 2016
posted by ASeveredHead at 12:28 PM on August 2, 2016
Logo for me was like being on Tatooine and hearing about the rebellion. I'd read about it in magazines especially with the robot turtle plotter thingie but absolutely never saw it in person. By the time it was a thing we young hackers were the masters of PETSCII and squalid BASICA draw commands (which survived way too long).
I think Logo's chief gift to programming was the successful leap from "languages for students" to "languages for students that did cool things out of the box". The programming landscape is littered with someone's pedantic ideas of a good learning language made real but to make neat things happen easily is still kind of a trick. That inspiration -- to make neat easy -- has continued to drive neat things like Processing and Arduino to this day.
.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:48 PM on August 2, 2016 [4 favorites]
I think Logo's chief gift to programming was the successful leap from "languages for students" to "languages for students that did cool things out of the box". The programming landscape is littered with someone's pedantic ideas of a good learning language made real but to make neat things happen easily is still kind of a trick. That inspiration -- to make neat easy -- has continued to drive neat things like Processing and Arduino to this day.
.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:48 PM on August 2, 2016 [4 favorites]
.
Logo was arguably my first intro to programming too. :(
posted by iffthen at 2:30 AM on August 3, 2016
Logo was arguably my first intro to programming too. :(
posted by iffthen at 2:30 AM on August 3, 2016
« Older Convexity is a bothersome dimension | Listen over cocktails in your garden Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by motdiem2 at 12:46 PM on August 1, 2016