

Why isn't the logo language developed into a proper programming language? - Immortalin

I really like the logo programming language, it&#x27;s strong support for cellular automata is especially nice. It has a similar syntax but does not contain as much parenthesis as lisp while retaining still retaining all of its power. Why hasn&#x27;t there been work done to turn logo into a general purpose language complete with and IDE and everything?
======
jarcane
There are a number of modern Logo languages like NetLogo and so forth, and
even older Logos were actually capable of quite a lot more than advertised
(Color Logo for the TRS-80 Color Computer even included a chapter teaching
recursion!)

The trouble is that little teaching with Logo ever goes that far, focusing on
a very imperative simple base syntax to make the little turtle move around,
and then promptly moves to some other language to teach actual structured
programming.

A language needs people to grow up and keep using it to survive, and no one
grew up just using Logo; they all moved to Basic or JavaScript or Python or
Scheme. And since Logo doesn't do anything any other Lisp can't already do,
there really wasn't much point with sticking with it.

------
networked
Rebol ([http://rebol.com/](http://rebol.com/)) and Red ([http://red-
lang.org/](http://red-lang.org/)) may be considered "proper" (i.e.,
production-ready) programming languages derived from Logo. They share a good
chunk of its parentheses-optional syntax.

Example code (taken from
[http://www.rebol.net/cookbook/recipes/0004.html](http://www.rebol.net/cookbook/recipes/0004.html)):

    
    
        foreach file read %./ [
            if find [%.txt %.text] suffix? file [
                write file replace/all read file "web" "rebol"
            ]
        ]
    

The same with parentheses:

    
    
        (foreach file (read %./) [
            (if (find [%.txt %.text] (suffix? file)) [
                (write file (replace/all (read file) "web" "rebol"))
            ])
        ])

~~~
networked
I should correct what I wrote above: Red is not yet production-ready but it
aspires to be a more modern, open source alternative to Rebol 2 for use in
production. (Rebol 2 is now closed-source freeware; it used to cost a lot of
money and be marketed towards the enterprise.)

------
GregBuchholz
What implementations are you using? FMSLogo seems pretty full featured, and
aUCBLogo has an IDE looking editor.

[http://fmslogo.sourceforge.net/](http://fmslogo.sourceforge.net/)

[http://aucblogo.org/en/Screenshots.html](http://aucblogo.org/en/Screenshots.html)

------
tree_of_item
I think one of the motivations behind Logo is being a low complexity
environment for learning about computation. Bloating it up with all the
trappings of professional software development would seem to defeat the
purpose.

------
brudgers
_Why hasn 't there been work done to turn logo into a general purpose language
complete with and IDE and everything?_

The big fuzzy picture of languages includes a community of speakers/users. The
community is what distinguishes living and dead languages. The Logo community
has not developed tools for doing tasks for which are not part of the
ecosystem it inhabits.

Let the base case be the set of reasons you have not developed an IDE, etc.

The proof is an induction.

------
davelnewton
It already _is_ a GP language, it just happens to be specialized, by design,
to serve a particular niche.

