Logo Overnight

 

Gary pointed me to a Mitchel Resnick paper (that probably has Brian Silverman ideas in it) called Logo Overnight: computer programs that are designed to work on problems that take a long time to solve, so you leave them running on your computer overnight.

I was taken by the Monkeys at the Keyboard project, where you program Logo to select three letters and if they end up spelling "cat" the program stops. I needed a little of Brian's help but I adapted it to ArtLogo.

    

to monkeys
ht

setfontsize 144
make "letter1 pick alphabet
make "letter2 pick alphabet
make "letter3 pick alphabet
make "guess word :letter1 word :letter2 :letter3
print :guess
drawtext :guess
wait .01
clean ht
setfontsize 144
make "number-of-guesses :number-of-guesses + 1
end


to alphabet
output pick [ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z]
end


to pick :list
output item random2 1 count :list :list
end


to monkeysetup
make "number-of-guesses 0
loop
[monkeys
if :guess = "cat
[drawtext :guess print :number-of-guesses stop ]
end

I am enjoying running it and seeing how long it takes to guess: the first time was 5502 guesses. The most guesses, so far, is 28,016. The best part is like in the article, I managed to stop the guesses right as it guessed "dog"!

I didn't stop there: I also adapted the project to Scratch.

The monkey bangs away at the keyboard, loading three letters in a list then comparing it letter by letter to its objective. When it matches "cat," Scratch appears and meows then announces the number of guesses. You can see some of the numbers in the project comments. Run it and leave a comment!

I was really enchanted by this project because so much of what we do with computers is done quickly. Projects like Jay Silver's Camera for the Invisible or the Microbit 2 "Napping Cat" tutorial project capture the nuances of something that evolves and changes over time. I think this project that showcases computing power is a fascinating lesson. I put it in front of my students explaining that like their ATM pins, it could potentially take a long time to "crack" this code, or it could be the first guess because it is all random. This in turn led me to conversations with my wife about what it would take to write even the first sentence from Hamlet: "Who's there?" After considering the problem while walking the dog, I concluded that you would need to do it letter by letter and punctuation rather than trying to "guess" 'who's,' for example. Tricky business.

I hope you enjoy considering these ideas and playing with them, too.