LOGO is for Learning

LOGO is a computer language invented by Seymour Papert at the M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the late sixties. Papert was doing research in the application of technology to elementary education, and needed a language with which children could communicate with a computer. The principal language used in A1 research a t MIT was LISP (~1sPtr ocessing). LOGO is essentially a simplified version of LISP. By eliminating the need for most parentheses, and by making it easy to write programs in small pieces, Papert succeeded in making it possible for even pre-school children to use LOGO. But he also managed to retain all of LISP's most powerful features, which are discussed below. The dream of researchers is to have a language so flexible that the computer environment can be adapted t o any situation. It is a delightful surprise to see how close LOGO comes to this goal.