Is Blockly related to the programming language Logo?

[ElicaTeam]

Hi everyone -

I manage the Logo Tree Project. The goal is to capture in a genealogical tree the diversity of all implementations, versions and dialects of the Logo programming language. I'm trying to decide whether Blockly should be included in the Logo Tree or not. The tree contains info for almost 300 Logo implementations (listed here). About 20 of them are not pure Logos, but Logo-like or Logo-inspired. For example, the tree contains Scratch, BYOB, and Boxer. Blockly looks like conceptually related to them - you build a program by attaching 2D blocks - so that's why I'm wondering about Blockly and Logo.

So, my question is:

Is Blockly related to Logo and/or inspired by Logo? If not, is it inspired by any Logo-like environment?

Depending on the answer, I may have more detailed question (like years, platform, version, etc) or may have no more questions.

Regards,

- Pavel

[Mark Friedman]

Pavel,

  Please take a look at the first item in the Blockly FAQ.  Further note that Blockly was originally designed to replace OpenBlocks in App Inventor.  OpenBlocks was built for StarLogo TNG (which, I believe, is in your tree).

-Mark

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[ElicaTeam]

Thanks, Mark -

The FAQ is really helpful. I decided to add Blockly as one of the non-Logo ideological descendants of Logo (yes, StarLogo TNG is in the tree). This allows me to ask the other questions. For the Logo tree I need some primary information about Blockly (see 1-8 below). I tried to extract some of it. I'd be glad if you could verify whether it is correct:

1. name = Blockly
   
2. reference/url = code.google.com/p/blockly
   
3. years of development = 2011-2014
   
4. latest version number = ???
   
5. development status = Active
   
6. platform = JavaScript
   
7. inspirer = (MIT) App Inventor
   
8. author = Neil Fraser
   

Here are some problems:

• item (3) contradicts with the information stored for App Inventor (like being developed in 2012), so Blockly cannot be inspired by something developed after Blockly's beginning. This issue is resolved by extending App Inventor's development one year earlier (i.e. 2011-2012) - I need to verify this with MIT people. 
  
• item (4) is unknown, maybe there is no official version number?
  
• item (8) is possibly incomplete
  

For your information, here is the (current) lineage of Blockly:

1. LISP
   
2. BBN Logo / Ghost (1966-1967)
   
3. BBN PDP-1/10 Logo (1968-1969)
   
4. MIT PDP-10 Logo (1969)
   
5. MIT PDP-11 Logo (1970-1975)
   
6. Pascal Logo (1977-1978)
   
7. LCSI Apple Logo (1980)
   
8. Logo Writer (1985-1986)
   
9. Logo Writer II (1987-1988)
   
10. Microworlds (1993)
    
11. Microworlds 2 (1996-1997)
    
12. Microworlds Pro (1999-2000) and Logo Blocks (1995)
    
13. Scratch (2004-2013)
    
14. App Inventor (2011-2012)
    
15. Blockly (2011-2014)
    

Best regards,

- Pavel

[ElicaTeam]

FYI -

Just added more authors (found them in the credits). Now the list of Blockly authors is Neil Fraser, Quynh Neutron, Chris Pirich, Ellen Spertus, Phil Wagner, Spencer Gordon, Janet Miller.

- Pavel

[Neil Fraser]

On 10 April 2014 14:56, ElicaTeam <you...@elica.net> wrote:

Thanks, Mark -

The FAQ is really helpful. I decided to add Blockly as one of the non-Logo ideological descendants of Logo (yes, StarLogo TNG is in the tree). This allows me to ask the other questions. For the Logo tree I need some primary information about Blockly (see 1-8 below). I tried to extract some of it. I'd be glad if you could verify whether it is correct:

1. name = Blockly
   
2. reference/url = code.google.com/p/blockly
   
3. years of development = 2011-2014
   
4. latest version number = ???
   
5. development status = Active
   
6. platform = JavaScript
   
7. inspirer = (MIT) App Inventor
   
8. author = Neil Fraser
   

Here are some problems:

• item (3) contradicts with the information stored for App Inventor (like being developed in 2012), so Blockly cannot be inspired by something developed after Blockly's beginning. This issue is resolved by extending App Inventor's development one year earlier (i.e. 2011-2012) - I need to verify this with MIT people. 
  

I can confirm the accuracy of Blockly's dates.  Development started summer of 2011, and first public release was at Maker Faire in May 2012.

I'm not an expert on App Inventor, but one data point is that there was a book published about the project in May 2011:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/15560691?wmlspartner=wlpa&adid=22222222227000633123&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=41825047030&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=34932253990&veh=sem

• item (4) is unknown, maybe there is no official version number?
  

We are currently at version r1697:
https://code.google.com/p/blockly/source/list

In a few minutes we'll be at r1698.  And r1700 will probably be reached by noon tomorrow.  Not your traditional version numbers.

• item (8) is possibly incomplete
  

In terms of Blockly core, I'd say the following are the main four contributors:
- Neil Fraser (the project is mostly my fault)

- Ellen Spertus (internationalization)

- Mark Friedman (realtime collaboration)

- Quynh Neutron (math blocks, cloud storage, Dart and Python)

For item 2, our canonical URL is:  blockly.googlecode.com

--
Neil Fraser
http://neil.fraser.name

[Mark Friedman]

The confusion about the dates comes from the fact that App Inventor was originally developed by Google (see here for an announcement from 2009) and later moved to MIT (see here for that announcement).

-Mark

--

[David Smith]

Scratch was far more influenced by EToys, Squeak and Smalltalk than Logo or MicroWorlds directly, though Logo was a very important factor in the design and intent of Smalltalk. John Maloney, who implemented Scratch worked directly on EToys for Alan Kay and Mitch Resnick's and Alan's teams collaborated quite a bit including their yearly offsite Learning Lab . At minimum, EToys and Squeak were the direct precursors and I believe even the name Scratch was intentionally an homage to Squeak.

--

David A. Smith

[ElicaTeam]

Thanks Neil, Mark and David -

@Neil: I updated the URL and the list of core authors. The version number is set to r1700 (its r1699 in the repository at the time of writing this post).

@Mark: I fixed the dates of App Inventor to 2009-2012.

@David: Yes, cross-language breeding happens. Currently, the only non-Logo root node in the Logo Tree is LISP and I added it a week ago. I'll need some time to decide whether to add other non-Logo roots ... basically, the problem is that I'm scared by the eventual growth of the span of the tree.

Again, thanks everyone for the information. I'll stay in the group for a week (in case this discussion continues) and then will leave.

- Pavel