On 4/02/2021 1:05 am, Michael Daumling wrote:
> 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 am a lurker on this and a number of other lists. I am also a librarian
for <
https://hopl.info>. I haven't used Logo for a number of years
though did collaborate briefly with the makers of Lhogho.
> - Get away with the colon notation for variables. Kids and teachers struggle a lot with this feature.
It is a notational peculiarity of Logo. It reminds me of the "."
notation of BLISS. You probably still need a notation to differentiate
between the variable and what it contains. Forth uses "@" and other
scripting languages like Perl use "$". Certainly, many languages allow
context to define behaviour, e.g. C family. Depends on the pedagogy, I
suppose.
> - 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.
Yes.
> - 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.
Yes to that too. I wasn't aware that that could happen.
> - Remove DEFINE and TEXT; PRINOUT could print a procedure, but it may look differently due to optimizations - makes it easier to compile Logo.
No comment (can't show my ignorance too much now, can I?)
> - A centralized definition of a standard library.
Definitely.
> 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).
I doubt I'd be much help with that. But I'm open to participating at
some level or other.
One hopes that the list comprehension and other LISP-like powers of Logo
are not going to be compromised by a rewrite. That is, this better not
be a dumbing down of Logo to reach a wider audience and leave them as
dumb as where they started. A revised Logo would want to be a language
sufficient to be a track on <
https://exercism.io> and be a mind-strecher.
Just my twenty cents.
Bruce/bugmagnet