Logo with :turtle: (U+1F422)

Dear Reader,

I was first introduced to programming in middle school with the programming language Logo. It was super fun and what it made it so much fun was the fact that we could visualize the output of the programs that we wrote. If two people wrote the exact same program with the same logic it gave us the same output. Initially it was fun to figure out how to draw all kinds of shapes and visually see  them. When we ran out of shapes it become more fun to compare code to see who wrote the best code and in as few lines as possible.

Standard coding/computer/programming geeky things... and yes it was a lot of fun. I was most fascinated by how we could draw a circle with just a few lines of code.

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To MY_CIRCLE

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MY_CIRCLE

I never thought I would get into mainstream software development at that time. But now, it is my bread and butter. I like how Logo made it easy for anyone to learn programming.

Here are some links to Logo interpreters that you can still use today,

• jslogo
• papert

Nowadays, thousands of software programming languages are suited to particular applications and use cases. But the fundamentals remain the same and Logo taught a lot of those fundamentals really well.

My interest in programming grew over the years and after my first year of college, I took extra out of college classes at a local computer institute called NIIT. And thanks to my Dad who helped me select the courses that I needed to take. At first, it was hard. The jump from Logo, where one can visualize the output, to Unix and C Programming was not easy. I could not practice outside the classroom of the private institute and the software was not free. The course just become something I had to finish because I enrolled in it. Moreover, the trainer never bothered to show interest in my training or answer questions that I had. I was given course material and asked to go through it and learn by myself. I was probably the only college kid in institute where everyone else was much older and took computer courses only to get a job. No one took me seriously. It just made things more difficult but nonetheless, I endured and became a C and Unix guru. I cleared the final assessment and got my certificates.

Years later, I took an operating system course in college and had a student exam exercise to emulate the Dinning Philosophers problem. I was in a team of 3 and due to time constraints my teammates and I did not have enough time to write the program. So, we did what most students in the class did. We copied it and submitted it. We didn't even change the variable names. There was no time for it and OS stuff was tough to learn back then, so why to bother ;-). And as expected, everyone in IITB is smart so the tutor figured out that the WHOLE CLASS submitted the exact same program for the assignment and threatened to fail everyone if we don't redo it and resubmit it again. And yes, I took the lead, used my training in Unix and C and rewrote the whole program in original and submitted it. We passed with flying colors and thus learned about semaphores and mutexes.

Fun stuff.

Until next time.

Regards,

🐢