LOGO-L> Re: Punctuation (was: what is logo useful for anyways?)

[Chuck Shavit <CShavit@MagicSquare.com>]

 Brian Harvey wrote: 
 > Is this worth pursuing?  How much of a problem are quotes and
 > colons, really?

To the serious computer scientist who needs a tool for list manipulation
and lambda calculus, Logo is under-powered.   To an amateur programmer and
to kids, I believe that the complications introduced by the "quotes and
colons" are detrimental, and the benefit is marginal.  

In an unscientific survey that I made, not even one kid knew what these
"quotes and colons" are for, even if they knew when to use them.  At best,
kids could get used to these marks because "that's how things are done".  I
am sure that none of the readers of this group thinks that kids should be
educated to do things without understanding why.  

My guess is that 99 out of 100 Logo users will not be able to explain why
these signs are needed.  I could be wrong.  But if I'm not wrong, then, to
answer your question - this is well worth pursuing.

I remember a post by Olga Tuzova a few months ago about a student of hers
who got stuck with the Logo syntax when she wanted to use the Pythagorean
theorem in a program.  What she wanted to express was
    C = A^2 + B^2;
The above equation is a legal C statement, with a clear beginning and end.
Now translate it to Logo and compare.

Chuck Shavit
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