Re: LOGO-L> Re: Report on Lego

[Jeff <jeffr@mugc.cc.monash.edu.au>]

On Tue, 24 Feb 1998, Mike Doyle wrote:
> LEGO, classically, have used non-linguistic instructions for their kits to 
> make them (human) language independent and thereby international and cross 
> cultural. To use the graphic power of a modern computer to enable them to 
> regain consistency in their approach to technology would appear laudable. 
> LEGO might argue that they are simply shifting from an alphabetic to a 
> pictographic language representation system.
...except that's NOT what they're doing. An iconic programming language 
has been an ever receding goal for a long time. I don't think Lego are 
going to trump the CS community on this. Nor are they trying. 
Lego assembly diagrams are not comparable to computer programs, or 
writing systems. The iconic system currently provided with the RCX is an 
unfortunate and unneccessarily limited subset of Logo. Logo is an ideal 
robotics language. If Lego have left the RCX open enough, someone will 
provide a proper language for it. The disappointment expressed by many in 
this thread is that Lego didn't do it themselves.

Jeff Richardson
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