There are two main flavors of programming language: languages that closely follow "Turing" machine like style and closely resemble the actual (von Neuman) hardware, and languages that closely follow lambda calculus. The Turing style is very mechanical, gear and switches, and flows. The lambda calculus is very, well, much like calculus with everything being a function. C and Scheme are the cardinal languages representing these two types. Most languages are an offshoot to these two (formally equivalent) ways of doing things, with the von Neuman/Turing style being the most popular as it has (1) less of an entry barrier (initially easier), and is (2) faster as it is "close" to the hardware and thus makes effective use of it [0].
Now that hardware is cheap and powerful, and programmers time is more valuable than computer time, the "gold standard" of (fast!) C is less of an issue and various ways of making better use of programmers time is coming to the fore - for example, Java is popular is it is easy for a so-so programmer to crank out code in teams. In general there are many many languages, as there are many many uses for a computer and thus many niches exist for a programming language to fill (plus programmers tend to like playing around and creating languages). Here I want to briefly talk about one - Logo.
Yeah, you know - Logo. The 40+ year old language that is an offshoot to LISP (the original lambda calculus language), the language that has the little turtle that can draw on the screen. Turtle graphics - were one can draw neat little pictures by having a "turtle walk around the screen". Why did Logo never really take off? Why did it die?
It was educational.
"Educational" is the kiss of death. Do you want to look at irrelevant and pointless discussion? Look at X from an "educational" point of view. For example, "physics education". Or computer languages for education. Anything that enters the niche of education is bound to die a painful wallowing death, most likely scarring many children in its death throws.
There are likely many reasons for this - but take it as an axiom [1].
Logo was a victim of moving into the wrong niche. Logo seems like an interesting language - it can be used to teach a fundamentally powerful way of thinking (functions! recursion!) and has cool graphics too boot. But it was a powerful elixir given to people without the proper skills and incentives and want to learn it, and a watered down weak and mostly pointless version was poured out for the students. "Now after me: type {blah blah blah}
Now, what lessons can we draw from this?
Never, ever, ever do anything for educational purposes or spend time on something that is mainly sold as educational or go into education. You want you kids to be smart? Baby Einstein ain't going to do it. In investing your time never decide to do something because it is educational. EVERYTHING IS EDUCATIONAL. Education is a side effect of action and reflection. Pick to do something that is useful, or fun, or challenging, or orthogonal to what you know, or is part of the basis set of society, or that hot chicks/guys do, or is scary, or seems neat. You will learn. "Educational" things are often infantile versions of something real, where the dumbing down process kills it - or something that means well but is killed by the educational system. The lack of respect this process shows to the intended audience is sad, but the undercutting of actual education is what is truly unfortunate. The creators of Logo must have shed tears. If you love kids and want to teach them, don't move into an environment that is structured against this aim. I'm happy I have had the teachers I had, but you see many of them as empty shells by the time they are done. Maybe private school is a viable option, or writing kids books, or teaching summer camps, or having kids, or teaching Sunday school, or volunteering - but seriously, going into public education is not something conducive to education [3].
If we contrast Logo with BASIC, Logo comes up short. BASIC is a language that is vastly inferior to Logo in many respects, but actually was successful. The language still lives and has a vibrant grass roots community of people playing with it and making programs [4]. BASIC was basic - yet not cute and infantile and dumbed down. Programmers used it. Hobby magazines existed. It was real, not some pablum that was spoon fed and curricularized. Logo entered the maw of the educational system, in the hopes of bringing play and possibility and programming to the people, and it was smothered. BASIC was a pathetic tool compared to Logo, yet it was a real tool and one that had life external to schools.
Maybe Logo was too complex to be expected to thrive and no matter what would have died, but I suspect not. I sense that if the makers of Logo had realized what seems apparent now - that educational = kiss of death - and had targeted Logo to real life, not the holding pen of schools, it might have succeeded. The difference between school and life is somewhat like that of "astroturf" and "grassroots" movements, we don't expect much out of astroturf. It is not an ecosystem with evolution and life and wonder and creation and death and mysteries, it is a plastic replica sold by the square foot and colored with cheap dye. Logo expected to thrive and spark a revolution in the worse possible environment [5].
The key lesson to learn from Logo is this - "educational" is an euphemism for something that lacks vitality and value. Do not invest time and life into "educational" pursuits.
Notes:
[0] The magic of calculus is we can train monkeys to use it - engineers learn it all the time - as it's notational power is so great that you can get by with turning some gears and getting correct answers. But to really get calculus is harder - but very powerful once you do. Lambda calculus is like this: there is a barrier to getting it that prevents mass use. But if you get it you can do amazing things.
[1] For one, we don't select our best and brightest to be teachers. Can one really launch a revolution in thinking using third tier thinkers to propagate it? Is it plausible that "new math" or a dialect of LISP is going to be understood deeply and communicated powerfully by teachers, and then have the revolution spread from the school? Maybe for simplistic ideas that push built in buttons, but really: LISP? New Math? Secondly, budgets are huge and change is slow - so once a toehold is found, evolution is going to die - so if the idea is not perfect to begin with you just locked it in to a straight jacket. Thirdly - politics. Politics is about spending other peoples money - and thus you will see decisions that (1) can be sold to the lowest common denominator as a "good idea", (2) fear of responsibility for taking risks, (3) poor decisions as it is not really your money one is spending, (4) community and political and bureaucratic meddling and bickering, and many other factors that lead to bad decisions. Once something is put into the political domain you might as well hand it over to the USSR or GM to handle - because that is the level of quality you will be getting. The environment is poisoned. Do not expect deep thought, novel insights, or new (positive) revolutions to spring out of education.
[2] I actually was exposed to Logo in this manner - I had no clue about any of the ideas underlying Logo, or why we would want to use it, or how it was interesting. Not until years later did I even realize that I used Logo - mindlessly typing in some instructions to get a turtle to move, and then "exploratory learning" which consisted of letting the students do what they wanted (=talking about non-Logo/turtle stuff=fun but not "learning") after a brief "teaching session" (see above "type {blah blah blah}"). And this is in Canada - you know, the country to the north of the US with a semi-functioning school system! You can't teach a whole subtle and difficult theory of teaching - such as constructionalism or Socratic method or anything - in a few teacher development days or courses and expect useful outcomes.
[3] It really is surprising how badly schools actually teach. I doubt we could intentionally make a worse system - and for the most part every single person involved in the sausage factory of public schools has the best of intentions. As for being a teacher - look at the best writers, do you think they got that way by going to school to learn to be a writer? Sure, some did go to school in writing - but the best writers taught themselves through action. They would be good writers if they went into engineering instead (although they would have less time to spend writing, and some less exposure - so that route would slow them down...). They became good writers by living and practicing writing. Why would we expect an university degree in "education" to produce good teachers? The degree acts as a filter & signal: it, in combination with union rules, protects jobs by reducing supply and it signals that the person with the degree is serious enough about the work to sit through 4 years of courses. If we actually cared about having good teachers would we even have "education degrees"? Or would we select teachers out of the general population of people? I would rather have some former mechanic teach me mechanics, a writer teach English, a mathematician math. Sure, teaching requires certain logistical skills - but certainly not 4 years worth of them. Since teachers get the summer off, why not get new hires at the beginning of the summer break, train them up, and then then apprentice them into the system with training and interaction with other teachers? Oh yeah, I know why. The teachers are of the publicani class - and thus a solid voting block (i.e. have political value), and imagine what the system would be without the current setup (e.g. education degree & unions) - mostly retired people, people changing careers, and others that are nothing like the (typical) current teachers. The system is basically politically locked in - a large voting block would not like to see the change.
[4] And after we "learned" Logo in class, the cool kids would type in a little BASIC program that flashed colors on the screen, or play a little song, or made letters fall. The kids would play and explore and have fun with BASIC - and note my use of cool. Cool - not just nerds, but popular kids would learn the little "viral" programs. The makers of Logo would scream in horror at this, as it was exactly opposite to their intent and dreams. It was to be the other way around! Logo was to be fun, to be explored, to be used like art and against the dictates of the man! Logo was top down and withered as a distributed network of people experimenting and exploring did not exist.
[5]
