[elviejo79]

This goes to prove that java is a pretty bad language to teach pogramming.

in logo this is how you draw a square forward 100 Right 90 Forward 100 Right 90 Forward 100 Right 90 Forward 100 Right 90

Then in the second lesson you introduce loops repeat 4 Forward 100 Right 90 End

then you ask kids to draw hexagons octagons etc. and they will never forget what a for loop does.

Edit changed repeat 8 to repeat 4. Thank you.

[roryokane]

You could do that in Java if you just imported a turtle graphics library. A quick search brings up one such library, http://www.bfoit.org/itp/JavaTurtleGraphics.html. I agree that Java is a hard language to learn with, but its faults are not related to being unable to use turtle graphics as examples.

[mquander]

No, you couldn't. Did you look at that link? You have to wrap all this OO ceremony around it.

I don't think it's optimal to make someone type

  class Cross extends TurtleGraphicsWindow { public void myTurtleCmds() ...

at the start of every program when they don't yet have the background to understand what a single one of those words are for. It instills a habit of doing crazy shit mindlessly to try to satisfy the mysterious computer.

[tricolon]

I remember learning Java for the first time. I literally thought of "public static void main(String[] args)" as an incantation I just had to know. It took some practice to memorize it. It took far longer to actually learn what it meant.

[elviejo79]

My point is that there are good tools to learn programming. I think that there are languages in which difficult concepts befome easier to explain. logo being the prime example of such a teaching language.

[Volpe]

Repeat 4 (right?)