Thursday, March 27, 2008

Ah, Computer Nerd Memories...

I'd kept this in my reader to come back and take a look at it, and even if Logo turned 40 in October, it's still a good stroll down memory lane.

I remember this was my first expirience with computers, to be followed up soon after with Oregon Trail. Ah, buying bulls and whipping them to death across the country.

And I remember doing the trick talked about below, though I added color to mine. Poor teachers had to reboot the computer because they'd figure I'd set the turtle to go for about 3 hours.
clipped from blog.wired.com

I would type FORWARD 50 and the turtle would move forward. When I gave the command RIGHT 90, he would turn sharply to the right. If I prefaced those two commands with REPEAT 4 and surrounded them with brackets, the turtle would draw a square.

While I sat at my desk one day, two of my classmates figured out how to overwrite the entire screen, which seemed kinda naughty at the time. They giggled, did it again, then giggled some more. From curious children, hackers were born.

I was desperate to know how they did it. Eventually, they told me. Their method made sense: Tell the turtle to repeatedly move forward a very long distance and then turn very slightly.

 blog it

Taken from the brain of DaddyMan at 10:07 AM  

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