Boring grown-up stuff

This page is for grown-ups. You can read it anyway if you want to. But it's long and boring. Grown-ups like to read stuff that's long and boring. For kids it's more fun to start here.

Logo is a programming language considered particularly suitable for children, especially when emphasis is put on graphics. This book is an introduction to Logo programming targeted at readers at the maturity and intelligence level of a normal child aged 7-12. However, its main goal is not so much to teach Logo per se. What it attempts to provide is less easily quantifiable, but no less important. Examples include:

  • Confidence that programming (a term very rarely used inside the book) can be fun and that the computer is not an enemy.
  • Metaphors and concepts through which aspects of the world superficially unrelated to programming can be understood.
  • A non-hostile relationship to numbers and calculations.
  • Geometrical intuition (something even educated adults often lack).

    • Though the book to some extent has the flavor of a normal textbook, with a clear route from beginning to end, it does not have to be treated as such. This is not the place for a discussion of constructionism, the educational philosophy that this book takes as a starting point, but I must stress the importance of encouraging children to program things that are meaningful to them. If examples and suggested exercises are not meaningful, then they should be free to ignore them. There is also no suggested pace at which readers should advance, if they read the pages in order at all. Some readers may flip pages once a minute, others may be stuck on the same for weeks. A reluctance to move forward need not mean that the reader finds the topic difficult to get through, as it could just as well be that they are having so much fun with it that they are unwilling to shift focus. These things vary from child to child.

    Logo is often a shared activity between adult and child. You, the adult, are encouraged to think up your own examples, and maybe try them out when you are alone. The child can progess at his pace, and you can share the results of your experiments when the time is appropriate. It is important to note that you need not know Logo beforehand to go through this book with your child. In many regards it is even preferable if you learn together.

    Note that part II is conspicuously harder than part I. The page where the Koch snowflake is drawn, in particular, may be inaccessible even to the most advanced readers. The language in part II is also slightly more complicated, but I don't think this will prove a barrier.

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