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Comment by buescher | Hacker News Reader

If it's the same thread I'm thinking of, after reading it I wanted to show folks that Logo is a programming language, not a turtle graphics system.

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Definitely, and Brian Harvey's books go a long way to showing just that: Logo is a full fledged language with wonderful pedagogical value, as well as a neat tool for easy exploratory programming, possibly better than more modern options like Python that suck all the air out of the room right now.

I've always thought Logo syntax was not just easy but outright elegant. There could be a parallel universe where it continued to evolve into the de-facto-standard-scripting-language role Python has now.

REBOL's syntax is in some ways very similar to Logo; perhaps we may yet see successful descendants in our own universe.

REBOL was one of the first languages I learned. Some parts were super powerful and easy, but I remember struggling with some parts of the language. I can't remember what those parts were now.

Of all these compile to JS languages we see currently, it's a shame REBOL is not one of them. I might be tempted to pick it up again.

Maybe I should give Logo a try then when the book arrives.

Probably the same thread or threads. There was a couple posts that all hit the front page in the past week or two on the same day. I actually still have Brian Harvey’s full book series you posted in my Amazon cart.

Here’s an interesting article that discusses the language book.

https://citejournal.org/volume-20/issue-3-20/seminal-article...

Thanks - I enjoyed that. I'm tempted to track down my own copy of the language book.

No problem! And thank you for this post! Maybe I should go ahead and hit purchase on Harvey's Logo book series now.

There's also another book called Visual Modeling with Logo: A Structured Approach to Seeing that I've ordered that looks very interesting as well. I was drawn in by the description:

*****

> Filled with striking illustrations, this book offers an exciting exploration of Logo graphics for designers, architects, liberal arts students, and other individuals who are interested in creative applications of computers.

> Visual Modeling with Logo introduces the programming concepts necessary for describing and manipulating some of the basic visual structures in the world around us. Logo is a language that encourages visual problem-solving and helps us expand our understanding of how we see.

> The book provides a wide range of exercises for investigating the many dimensions and component parts of seeing; it proceeds from the simple to the complex, using representative models based on circular grids, rectangular grids, Islamic designs, organic forms, and different spatial systems.

*****

There's a few others books in a similar vain that I've found too: Learning Mathematics and Logo, Investigations in Algebra: An Approach to Using Logo, and Exploring Logo without a Computer. Then of course there's Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics.

I'm a big fan of books that use programming to explore other topics, and it seems Logo generated a lot of books like this. It's my own lofty dream to write my own series like these.

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