Back in 1980, computers in schools were rare, especially if you went to a state run Comprehensive like I did. It was more 'Survive until 3.30' rather than actually learning anything. However, I do remember once we got to use a rather scratched BBC B that was clamped to a trolly and had a monitor bolted on top. The only program it had was a program to make a turtle draw a line if you typed in commands. It was fun and it was a novelty but it was also over in about 5 minutes as the next group needed a turn.
That was my total exposure to LOGO until about a month ago where I was reading about LISP and how LOGO was a derivitive of the language and MUCH more than the sum of its turtles. As I am really interested in old languages, especially if the are on an Atari computer, I jumped in to an emulator and fired up a disk image...
...and promptly broke the emulator as I put the recursive language in a death loop that crashed all its registers! So below will be some of the useless nonsense I come up with as I chase the turtle away and look for the serious language underneath.
The penny is starting to drop. I still dont yet understand loops, but the fact that you can call other procedures is so cool (and dangerous! Watch out for deathlooping!) I wish it was more widespread over here, getting rescources is proving difficult but thank the internet gods for the internet archive!
Program:Wheel art!
OK so this is absolutely pointless. Pretty, but pointless. Everything that Im doing here from the 'MAKE' to the 'FD' Is me finding out what commands do what. I even get the procedure to call itself without nuking the emulator (a triumph!)
This is my first ever LOGO program and I am really proud of it.
ATARI LOGO: WHEEL PROGRAM
TO WHEEL
FS
MAKE "X ( RANDOM 320 ) - 160
MAKE "Y ( RANDOM 240 ) - 120
MAKE "PCA ( RANDOM 120 ) + 7
MAKE "PCB ( RANDOM 120 ) + 7
MAKE "PNA RANDOM 3
MAKE "PNB RANDOM 3
MAKE "BGC RANDOM 126
SETBG :BGC
PU
TELL 0
SETPOS LIST :X :Y
SETPN :PNA
SETPC :PNA :PCA
PD
REPEAT 25 [FD 20 RT 90 RT 25 FD 40]
PU
TELL 1
SETPOS LIST :X :Y
SETPN :PNB
SETPC :PNB :PCB
PD
REPEAT 25 [FD 25 LT 25 LT 60 FD 15]
WHEEL
END