Figure 1: The logo of UCBLogo Figure 2: The logo of KTurtle The most important aspect of Logo, and what makes it a very useful training tool, is its turtle graphics. These constructs can be used to train children in programming. Logo has conditional statements, loops, functions, recursion, file handling, etc, which are necessary parts of any general-purpose programming language. It is just a programming language specification. In a very a strict sense, Logo is not a programming language.
It is described as a dialect of Lisp, a functional programming language. Logo can be called a general-purpose programming language. But an eight-year-old child who wants to learn programming should explore Logo, a programming language specifically designed for kids. In my opinion it will be slightly easier for a first-time learner to start with a language like Python that has its own shell, rather than languages like C or Java. The other important question is ‘What should be taught as the first programming language?’ Should it be a normal programming language like Python or Java, or should it be a programming language specifically designed to teach programming principles to children? Well, if you are a 15-year-old with good mathematical skills then start learning Python immediately. By that age, a child knows all the basic arithmetic necessary to do some sort of programming. All I could find were a bunch of articles sharing personal opinions.Ī child aged eight to ten years can start learning programming.
I couldn’t find any scientific studies regarding this.
Personal experiences aside, the important question is, ‘What is the right age to start learning programming?’ The answer is sure to be contested. I started learning programming when I was 15, and was quite okay with the idea of using computers to do something other than playing video games.