What is the current status of LOGO? (The programming language) [closed]

Question

In another Q I saw someone mention LOGO and it reminded me of some programming language from the past, mostly used for educational purposes. Basically, you would have to program a turtle with a pen through it's back. By telling it where to move, the pen would draw lines. It could also lift the pen to move without drawing lines. I have fond memories of this language, since it was one of the first I've ever used, about 30 years ago. (Yeah, I'm old.) Well, I only programmed with LOGO for two days or so, but it got me hooked to programming.

But I wonder if the LOGO information on it's Wikipedia page is still correct. And more importantly, are there versions that will create .NET binaries? Are there only LOGO Interpreters and no compilers? What is the current status of this educational language?

And more interestingly, are there more experts here at SO who have experimented with LOGO in the past?

Yeah, I know. Nowadays this language is a bit antique but I got some warm and comfortable memories when I remembered this interesting language from my history. For a teenager back then, it was fun!

Claybourne

Answer 1

Yeah, I know. Nowadays this language is a bit antique but I got some warm and comfortable memories when I remembered this interesting language from my history. For a teenager back then, it was fun!

Geez, you must be old!

Just kidding … I do think all the information on Wikipedia is still accurate.

I also do think it is a dead language (or that it should be at least). As for the question about other experts who experienced it … I don't think it ever was a really used language. Maybe a bit at school, but still I think there's some better alternatives, so I think people who got to code using LOGO must be rare. Good luck with that.

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After looking it up, it does seem like it was still used quite a bit in university for robotic programming.

Burnham

Well, I'm a year older than Logo itself. :-) I later found my Logo knowledge useful when I had to draw graphs on a plotter for some project. There are quite a few similarities, although the plotter didn't support procedures or even any math. – Claybourne

Answer 2

Check out NetLogo, a modern multi-turtle Logo that allows programming simulations, animations, and games. See http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/ for samples of what you can build. There is an active user community at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/netlogo-users/

The number of Logo users out there isn't anywhere near as large as it is for popular, mainstream languages like Java and Python, but it's large enough to be viable and self-sustaining.

see also http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/paperinfo/tpci/Logo.html

(note: I am the lead developer of NetLogo)

Diahann

Answer 3

Logo was one of the first languages I ever used, although only for drawing. Our classes were based on drawing simple geometric shapes (polygons), and simple pictures (e.g. a house, a car) - very interesting to a young programmer-child!

turtle is a modern implementation of Logo's turtle graphics in Python using Tk. It's part of the standard library, so if you have a Python install you can relive the good old days:

import turtle

for i in range(100):
    turtle.forward(i)
    turtle.left(15)

There are both object-oriented and procedural interfaces. It's still surprisingly fun.

Chaiken

Answer 4

You might want to have a look at Kojo. It's quite similar to LOGO and is implemented in Scala.

Here is some sample code from Kojo:

clear()
setAnimationDelay(100)
setPenColor(blue)
left(45)
repeat (4) {
    forward(200)
    right()
}
repeat (4) {
    repeat (4) {
         forward(50)
         right()
    }
    penUp()
    forward(50)
    right()
    forward(50)
    left()
    penDown
}
penUp()
home()

And some screenshots...

Vair