Re: A Plain English Compiler

[I'm reminded of Logo, which was a big hit around 1970 teaching kids to
program, then disappeared... -John]


Yes, I thought of LOGO myself as I replied to your previous post. But I'm
not sure LOGO is as dead as you might think: many groups are still active
with the thing, from the "Turtle Academy" (http://turtleacademy.com/) to MIT
(http://el.media.mit.edu/logo-foundation/index.html). Google for others.


I think the main problem with Logo is that, like other artificial languages,
it confounds the essential concepts of programming (sequence, conditionals,
loops, types, variables, parameters, etc) with the syntax used to represent
them. And worse -- due to its LISP heritage -- it often encourages the
student to implement certain things in less-than-intuitive ways (making
lists of things that are not naturally lists; using recursion where a simple
loop is the obvious answer, etc). Plain English avoids both of these
shortcomings.
[We're back to arguing about what's intuitive. Having taught a
certain number of undergraduates, I can report that neither loops nor
recursion are obvious and some people have enormous trouble imagining
a variable with contents that are updated, which is the key concept to
make loops work. Anyway, under the semicolon rule, we're done with
this thread. -John]

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.