Introduction
Table of Contents
KTurtle is an educational programming environment that uses TurtleScript, a programming language loosely based on and inspired by Logo. The goal of KTurtle is to make programming as easy and accessible as possible. This makes KTurtle suitable for teaching kids the basics of math, geometry and... programming. One of the main features of TurtleScript is the ability to translate the commands into the speaking language of the programmer.
KTurtle is named after “the turtle” that plays a central role in the programming environment. The user programs the turtle, using the TurtleScript commands, to draw a picture on the canvas.
TurtleScript, the programming language used in KTurtle, is heavily inspired by some of the fundamental concepts of the Logo programming language. The first version of Logo was created by Seymour Papert of MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1967 as an offshoot of the LISP programming language. From then many versions of Logo have been released. By 1980 Logo was gaining momentum, with versions for MSX, Commodore, Atari, Apple II and IBM PC systems. These versions were mainly for educational purposes. LCSI released Mac®Logo in 1985 as a tool for professional programmers, but it never caught on. MIT is still maintaining a site on Logo which can be found on http://el.media.mit.edu/logo- foundation/.
Today there are several versions of Logo around which can easily be found on MIT's Logo site and by a simple Google search.
In comparison with most modern versions of Logo, TurtleScript implements only the basic commands best suited for the educational purposes of the language, and does not try to fulfill professional programmer's needs.
