[Coco] CoCo Rom pak

[Willard Goosey]

On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 10:42:11AM -0400, Donald Person wrote:
>    You must've gotten a bad pak. I'm using the VCC emulator (thanks again 
> for the suggestion all!) and Logo works fine.

Eh, I found a copy of the ROM version on a virtual disk somewhere.
Now, if someone had a copy of the disk version on the Net, that would
be cool.

>    I agree that it was considered a toy by most people and thus dismissed, 
> because as a kid I learned a lot about programming by using Logo. Between 
> Color basic and Color Logo, I learned a hell of a lot in a short time.

Well, I don't really know a lot about LOGO.  Never used it directly.
I got interested in it because my favorite clone EMACS uses a version
instead of LISP.  I'd write scripts in it, wondering where this weird
LISP-without-parens-thing came from.  Then one day I was idly looking
through docs for various programming languages, and found the docs for
UCB LOGO.  When I got a few pages into the manual, a light bulb lit
up!

So I've been collecting versions of LOGO for my various computers.
With no strings, no lists, and integer-only math, I think you must
have quickly hit a wall in Color LOGO.  On the other hand, it does
have some interesting ideas.  I'm going to have to investigate this
message-passing system between multiple turtles!

>    I have had the chance to talk with a few kids who are attending college 
> for computer programming, and it's sad to say but many of them just don't 
> have any knowledge at all before they start school; no "base" to start 
> from. 

Which is bad for them!  When I started college for CS, it was simply assumed
that we either already knew (or could figure out) a lot of the basic
(pun intended) operations on the computers.  Which was fine for me, I
started out on a CoCo.  Not so fine for some others.  A friend of mine
(bio major) had to take the lowest-level CS class as a general
requirement.  He grew up before the Age of the PC, and he got no help
whatsoever from the school.
 
>I think it's *partly* do to how well the user manuals were
>written. I've looked at all the "Sam's" and "Dummies" books for
>different languages and none of them can compare with the simplicity
>of the old Radio Shack books.
>
True.  I learned LOTS from the CoCo's BASIC manuals.  And the Color
LOGO book is also well done, as far as I got in it yesterday.

Willard
-- 
Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
Socorro, New Mexico, USA
I search my heart and find Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.
  -- R.E. Howard