Documentation & Books

[Jim Hurley]

It is with some hesitation that I offer this in connection with this 
discussion of books and documentation.

Some years ago I wrote a small book: "LOGO Physics", Holt, Reinhardt 
and Winston

It was intended to provide a workbook for students of LOGO, to 
advance their LOGO skills and allow them to learn a little physics on 
the side. Once they tire of drawing polygons, perhaps they would like 
to draw a planetary orbit based on Newton's laws of motion.

Later, after I had discovered HC, I translated the book into 
HyperTalk, which I felt was much better suited to beginning students. 
LOGO was a LISP derivative, and, while list processing is well suited 
to artificial intelligence, it is not the best language for beginning 
students.

I have made a few minor changes to make it more suitable to RunRev, 
and put a copy of this MS Word file on my web site:

http://home.infostations.net/jhurley/

(Look for "Programming") Caveat: It has not been class tested or even 
proof read.

This is not a challenge to Dan's book, or any book intended to teach 
the fundamentals of programming. It is intended to be used in an 
Advanced Placement course in High School for science students--a 
course which doesn't exist. It is not appropriate for students 
interested in Computer Science. It is the kind of programming that 
scientists use, i.e. light on theory, heavy on whatever-works.

I do think the use of Turtle Graphics would be a useful addendum to a 
high school programming course. The student gets instant 
gratification in graphic format, and offers a change of pace to text 
processing.

I believe there may be a Turtle Graphics tutorial in the works at RunRev.

Jim