Modern Logo

“If we didn’t care about speed, it might make sense to use Python, Ruby, or many other scripting languages.”

I love this fallacy. It’s the classic language speed is more important than programming speed fallacy. That used to be true, it isn’t any more.

Let’s say we have to write a program to analyse a data set and report it to our boss. Jeff starts the program in C++ and I start writing it in Python.

It takes me two days, it takes Jeff three. Let’s say my program takes ten times a long to run than Jeff’s. Jeff’s takes two hours, mine takes twenty. Even so, I’ve still beaten Jeff.

I’m still a day cheaper than Jeff too. Twenty hours of CPU time is much less than one day of work time. We charge a day of development at roughly a thousand for a day. I can get a cheap PC for around 300 plus 0.10 of electricity. I’ve still got 700 more than Jeff.

It’s even worse, let’s say that the reason my program is slower than Jeff’s is because of two or three slow routines. I can factor those routines out and write them in C++. This task might take a couple of hours. My program is now just as fast and I’ve still beaten Jeff.

You’d have to be nuts to use C or C++ on new project.

I remember using Logo in the 5th Grade and actually entering a programming competition with a Logo Program. For how simple the idea is you could actually do a lot of fun things with it especially for kids. Making your own simple games as well as some that are a lot more advanced in the commands and the visuals. It might sound bad, but the way that I learned how to structure code into subroutines can still be seen a little in the way that I currently write code and making sure that I try to seperate input, processing and output.

Don’t forget the LEGO TC Logo. Build a car out of Legos and move it around by using a Logo program.

Ancient Logo:

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