Did you feel learning to program with turtle graphics was useful?

Question

I'm preparing to teach someone to program. When I learned the course material used turtle graphics for the first few exercises. In reading introductory textbooks I have not found one that uses the technique. Did others find this approach helpful. If not what is a better way to learn to program?

Answer 1

I learned to program in BASIC by writing simple programs drawing faces (I mean circles and squares) on the screen. Somehow the whole turtle programming was never my thing, although a few of my friends learned that way. Later on I moved to Pascal, then to Delphi, Java and C++/C#. In my opinion the trick is to "wow" your student and impress/empower with potential things that you can accomplish by writing your own programs. I would actually demonstrate some GUI programming or game programming. It's much easier to learn the basics by keeping the end goal in mind.

Recently I came across SmallBasic - a cool programming environment for kids designed to teach concepts. I would give that a try. It comes with a pretty complete paper describing how to use it.

Answer 2

In the late 80s, before I was programming in C, I was programming in Applesoft BASIC and Logo. As a child I thought the turtle was great because it make programming simple. If I decide to teach my children Logo I will probably start here to get an actively developed Logo interpreter.

Answer 3

I think it depends on age of the target group.

If they are children (I would say up to 12-14 years), doing any easy graphics is a good way to motivate them; on the other hand, don't expect them to learn much about real programming or algorithms.

If they are teens (14-18), it's perhaps still good to use some algorithms that give pretty results (for example 3D or fractals), but since they are older and capable of more abstract thinking, I don't think 2D turtle graphics is interesting enough.

If they are older, doing any graphics is a distraction. At that age, they should have enough inner motivation to learn without anything fancy.

To sum up, I think that fancy graphics serves more motivational role (that you see what you did fast, and it's easy to show others what can you do with a computer) than learning role (that it would make learning real programming easier).

Answer 4

The key thing about LOGO is user-defined functions. It is very good at conveying that, as long as you emphasize it. Show interactively how to draw a square, then make a new word called square. Then show how you can draw patterns using square. Then make those patterns into words, and so on.

Answer 5

When I got my first computer (VIC-20) and started programming it was very hard to explain to my parents what I was doing.

My mother tok a course in computing preparing for a project of computerizing the library she worked in. They had a couple of classes introducing them to programming. After learning LOGO she came home and said that she suddenly understood what I was into.

So LOGO with turtle graphics brought us closer together!

Answer 6

I wrote script/code in a c-like dialect for a game called Doom2 before I knew what programming was, so when it came to seriously learning about concepts such as pointers, inheritance and polymorphism I found the basics a breeze because I could construct a mental model to not only help me understand, but also appreciate how cool things like pointers and arrays are.

A friend of mine is a good programming student, but he gets frustrated when he can't visualize an algorithm working, when I was starting to help other students I found they had the same problem, if they can't see something working it's harder to appreciate as a fledgling programmer, the same friend eloquently suggested I "Show 'em some crazy pimp shit and then show them how it's done". He's right, even if someone really wants to learn something they'll be able to draw on more mental energy if they think what they're learning lets them do awesome things.

My best bit of advice is this: AT THE START SPEND AS LITTLE TIME PROGRAMMING TO THE CONSOLE AS POSSIBLE

It makes you feel constrained and your efforts appear futile, only after you appreciate it as a front end should it be used for learning to program. I wouldn't use logo myself because I don't think it can teach concepts such as the aforementioned polymorphism or inheritance nearly as well as other methods, I know a friend of mine is teaching a teenager how to program using XNA in a wrapper, I think anything that can let you blit an image to the screen is fine. That way you can see why you'd want an abstract base class called EnemyEntity with behavior that's inherited by zombie and dog etc. It's not that the concepts are hard to understand, it's just that at first they're hard to appreciate.

I could go on but I think that puts across what I've learned by teaching others. I think using graphics in teaching programming allows students to gain the ability to build mental models of intangible concepts faster than any other.

XNA If you want to teach C# that's an amazing graphics library, just write a wrapper sprite class to hide as much complexity when first starting out and teaching concepts.

SDL A lower level library if you're going to start with c++

Answer 7

During one of my first-year computer science papers we used Java to create fractal patterns via a turtle object.

It was pretty fun to see visually whether or not we had correctly implemented the algorithm required to produce a certain pattern. However, so answer the main question, I wouldn't say that programming via a turtle is useful. I'd say the best way to teach someone to program is to get them to build their own app to do whatever they want it to do. This gives them creative control, plus if they get stuck they can learn how to resolve a problem.

Answer 8

You could do worse in teaching programming than using a tool like Scratch. It's a drag and drop programming interface and can be used to teach basic concepts of programming with some fun visual results (as can be seen from the gallery on their website).

Rob

Answer 9

I did a "computing for kids" course in the late eighties, and there was an extensive section on turtle graphics using logo. In all honesty I was bored to tears, and learned virtually nothing from it.

I think "programming the turtle" might work better for someone who is artistically inclined, or hugely into geometry, but by and large, there are far more interesting problems to attack, even for kids.

Answer 10

Ah, the memories of good old Logo. I think I got more of a geometry lesson than a programming lesson out of it, e.g. figuring out how much to turn at various points to produce a particular shape, design or pattern. It may work if you plan on mixing geometry with the programming, but if the person doesn't have the basics of geometry, e.g. what is a square and how is it different from other 4-sided shapes, what is a triangle, etc.

Answer 11

I used logo and turtle at school too, a great introduction.

It looks like our kids will be getting a slightly updated interface with Microsoft Kodu. It looks very impressive. It's an icon based programming language made for creating games that runs on X-Box Live.

Answer 12

Logo gave me a very clear picture (no pun intended) on how recursive functions would work, and since I was doing assembly programming at the time, the need to return to the previous state when returning to a method became very clear with Logo.

Recursive implementations of things where also very easy to see the effect of.

Answer 13

I don't know if it helped me at all with developing coding skills, but it certainly made me aware of the power of coding.

Answer 14

I'm currently learning python and using a little bit of turtle. In labs we haven't used it, but our homework does. It's nice to know it exists, and it's a good way to get certain commands and syntax in. Overall I don't feel it was completely necessary though.

Answer 15

When I was young, I found it very interesting. It was one of the first programming languages that I've learned, even though I've used it for about two days. It started my interest in programming.

Nowadays, I think the syntax is a bit unclear because most statements are abbreviations. Nowadays, computers are far more powerful thus the language could profit from clearer statement. Another factor is the native language of the person who is learning to use it. If English is not your native language then Logo becomes a bit more complex to understand. So if you're teaching Logo to children, make sure they're familiar with English terms first. (Quite easy if you're a native English-speaking person. More complex if you're originally Dutch, German, French, Portuguese. Even more complex if you're Russian or Chinese because you'd have to adjust to a different character set too.)

Answer 16

I have just begun teaching my 7-year-old how to program using Logo, and he is having a load of fun with it. The commands are easy enough for his limited reading ability and he just loves drawing cool pictures using the turtle graphics. I was amazed at how well he retained what he had learned using it, so I feel it was a good choice for his age.

For older kids (or adults) other languages might have more advantages as a beginner language though

Answer 17

I strongly suggest to start with a interpreted language like Logo (not compiled) because of the quality of the error messages. Reading error messages is very important in this process. Also, at the easy level, Logo allows you to run your instructions one by one in direct mode and carry them to your procedures when you get the expected results.

@ Alex: MicroWorlds is a commercial version of Logo and it does exist in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, etc. it's a big plus if you are not a native English-speaking person.

Answer 18

LOGO is not only Turtle-Graphics. There are also other interesting concepts in it which come from LISP. 'Turtle' is just icing on the cake and the "imperative" side of Logo. :)