Logo online

Dude, I wish I could make this when a kid!

This week I heard the news of a kind of online version of Logo, using Blockly. I happened to have had 1 year of Logo at my elementary school, so I definitely had to check it out; it did ring a lot of bells!

Don't you know Logo? It's an old programming language created for educational purposes. It's probably full of cool features and etc., but for me (and I'm sure, for a lot of other people) it's The Turtle Language. In the center of the screen, there is a turtle. When it walks, it leaves a trace on the screen. You can tell the turtle to move forward, backward, or to turn (in degrees). With this, you can go about drawing with your computer by programming the turtle. Then there are loops, conditionals, change color, etc. This online version gladly works very well, and since it is "Blockly", we don't even have to learn any syntax or keyword. The down point is... that there is no turtle - it was replaced by a circle+arrow drawing. Sigh.

While nostalgically trying it out, I accidentally created a star, which evolved onto this psychodelic star. Try it out and play with the color parameters, it's cool to see the drawing being formed.

I can't say that early experience with Logo led me to become a programmer, but it probably helped. I still remember the amazement I felt when finding out about circles! Too bad the turtle didn't survive longer at my school - learning to draw an hexagon this way was no less exciting than playing hide and seek (ok, this is probably a nostalgic exaggeration, but still...)

Btw, if you're interested in teaching programming to kids, check this Maze game. Also, see how all this Blockly stuff started in this blog post.

Programming with Blockly. Yeah, I know, quite ugly... but it works very well!