Does Logo need a refresh?

Newsgroups	comp.lang.logo
Date	2021-02-03 09:05 -0800
Message-ID	<f8141278-e1e2-4db0-b0be-57e0329ee7d7n@googlegroups.com> (permalink)
Subject	Does Logo need a refresh?
From	Michael Daumling <daumling@gmail.com>

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Let me introduce myself. I am the author of Terrapin Logo (since 1993, actually). Terrapin Logo is still used to teach young students all over the world, and I continue to see feedback and provide support.

I have all kinds of feedback at Terrapin, mostly from teachers who want to teach Logo, and I think that Logo shows its age. What I would like to do is to define and create an updated version of the Logo programming language which should be more children-friendly in terms of syntax, and easier to compile.

Here are a few random thoughts:

- Get away with the colon notation for variables. Kids and teachers struggle a lot with this feature.
- Simpler strings (with two single or double quotes) to make it more compatible with other languages and to allow multiline strrings and embedded variables in a {NAME} syntax.
- Variables are either local or global, but no scope chain across the call stack (what you would call lexically scoped). Accidentally accessing a variable that a grand-grandparent caller introduced is not helpful.
- Remove DEFINE and TEXT; PRINOUT could print a procedure, but it may look differently due to optimizations - makes it easier to compile Logo.
- A centralized definition of a standard library.

I’d set up a Github repo, and start producing documentation that we could work on together. When the dust settles, we could add a reference implementation in Javascript (Terrapin Logo is written in Javascript, and it is pretty darn fast, able to drive up to 1000 turtles).

Thoughts and comments are most welcome.

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Thread

Does Logo need a refresh? Michael Daumling <daumling@gmail.com> - 2021-02-03 09:05 -0800
  Re: Does Logo need a refresh? Bruce Axtens <snetxa@hotmail.com> - 2021-02-08 15:12 +0800
    Re: Does Logo need a refresh? Michael Daumling <daumling@gmail.com> - 2021-02-12 03:32 -0800
  Re: Does Logo need a refresh? Bruce Axtens <snetxa@hotmail.com> - 2021-02-08 15:23 +0800
  Re: Does Logo need a refresh? Qitam Nova <qitam.nova@gmail.com> - 2021-02-13 02:41 -0800
    Re: Does Logo need a refresh? Michael Daumling <daumling@gmail.com> - 2021-02-13 06:54 -0800
  Re: Does Logo need a refresh? Bruce Axtens <snetxa@hotmail.com> - 2021-02-15 10:47 +0800
  Re: Does Logo need a refresh? "yews...@gmail.com" <yewsiedu@gmail.com> - 2021-06-04 11:50 -0700

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