Computer Science Logo Style
by Brian Harvey · first published 1986
44% recommend56% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Three-volume introduction using Logo to teach real programming, focused on symbolic computation and Lisp-style thinking rather than just turtle graphics. Suits beginners and anyone wanting more than kid-level Logo.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…anything beyond turtle graphics, so that's all they're able to teach to students. Here's a good introduction to Logo by Brian Harvey with an emphasis on symbolic computation: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computer-science-logo-style
on “Clojure-turtle – Logo programming language in a Clojure context” ↗…a couple of hardware logo turtles. They've been at it for quite some time too: https://www.terrapinlogo.com/products/robots.html edit: there's also a very good three-book series for beginners called Computer Science Logo Style, by a UC Berkeley prof whose name I can't recall... Brian Harvey maybe?
on “Past and Future Turtles: The Evolution of the Logo Programming Language (Part 1)” ↗I love introductory textbooks. Some of my favorites: "Starting Forth" - Leo Brodie "Computer Science, Logo-Style" series - Brian Harvey "Algebra", "Functions and Graphs", "Methods of Coordinates", "Trigonometry" - I.M. Gelfand (does anyone know if he completed his Geometry textbook? I've never seen it. I've also…
on “Ask HN: What is your favorite introductory-level textbook?” ↗I think Logo gets a undeserved reputation as a "kindergarden" programming language, when it's actually a nice Lisp dialect. See Brian Harvey's "Computer Science, Logo Style". Available for free for personal use (as in free beer) at: 1. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html 2. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v2-toc2.html 3. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v3-toc2.html…
on “Ask HN: What programming language should I teach my child?” ↗…Abelson and diSessa -- yes, same Abelson as SICP's. I only wish I'd had it as a teenager; it was still interesting when I got it in my 20s. Less advanced but also plausibly worthwhile: Brian Harvey's Computer Science Logo Style.
on “What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?” ↗…noted, it's easy to start, but also powerful. Logo was the same. It was most well known for the turtle, but it was really Lisp, and Brian Harvey (Berkeley CS Prof) wrote a great 3-volume series called Computer Science Logo Style. Red is potent, but also Alpha. Big libraries are rarely needed. e.g., we have a native image datatype, and codecs for 4 common image formats. No external libs needed. The GUI system is built in, though…
on “Red Programming Language: Plans for 2019” ↗…Approach to Seeing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262530694 * Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics: https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificia... * Computer Science Logo Style: http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html It's disappointing to me that Logo died out and didn't remain around or evolve, and I find it a bit sad that many kids are getting introduced to programming…
on “Byte Magazine: LISP (1979)” ↗…why we can't have a Mathland that works that way, and tried to build one in Logo and the culture around it. This produced at least one awesome, ripping book (Turtle Geometry), some excellent ones like Computer Science Logo Style, and I imagine some local incarnations of Mathland where enough acculturated people got together. I'd guess that schools taking it up too quickly was what smothered it, under school's immense power to…
on “Computational thinking, 10 years later” ↗That might have been Brian Harvey's _Computer Science Logo Style_. Downloadable here: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/
on “Quirky computing books” ↗This is a link to Brian Harvey's home page which includes his book series: Computer Science Logo Style http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/
on “Starting to really grok Lisp with Brian Harvey's lectures at Berkeley.” ↗…own IDE, and interactive sound and graphics. Last updated 2017, so still current. http://fmslogo.sourceforge.net/ Professor Brian Harvey of Berkely has made freely available the three volumes of his 'Computer Science Logo Style', along with UCBLogo here: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html
on “30 years later, QBasic is still the best” ↗…its focus is on math more than programming, and it aims at exploring math more than covering a curriculum for a course. In Logo's heyday there were several other fine Logo books -- like Brian Harvey's Computer Science Logo Style, and one whose title I'm forgetting, by several authors, billing itself as for a particular Logo implementation but with lots of rather interesting projects like a basic proof assistant.
on “Past and Future Turtles: The Evolution of the Logo Programming Language (Part 1)” ↗…learn or to make it more advanced in programming language technology. Easier SICP from Brian Harvey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuTOo_Kj4U0&list=PL91cR71aKp... or him adopting this stuff to Logo: Computer Science Logo Style. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/ Or his book "Simply Scheme": https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/ss-toc2.html But what you are looking for is a book for a software developer wanting to learn…
on “Hofstadter on Lisp (1983)” ↗…[5]. Never experienced anything like that with any other programming language (except maybe for Forth and Lisp, but they are Red and Rebol ancestors too!). -- On a slightly different note: there's a "Computer science Logo style" book series [6]. [1]: https://www.red-lang.org/ [2]: https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm [3]: https://meltingasphalt.com/a-codebase-is-an-organism/ [4]: https://myanimelist.net/manga/149/Blame…
on “What Is a Logo-Like Language?” ↗…) didn't have any appreciable impact (in the tradition of Backus' Turing Lecture) upon either industry or academia, I doubt there any recipes for success among the masses. But in the tradition of the Computer Science Logo Style series (which built up to things like toy pascal compilers and expert systems), I occasionally dream of learning enough Snap! to port Iverson's samples from this lecture...
on “LOGO Manual by Abelson, Goodman, and Rudolph (1974) [pdf]” ↗