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We need a theory and practice of programming environments as conceptual instruments, where different languages and representations serve different cognitive purposes. (August 2026)

The (Lisp (Logo Workshop))

This Wiki represents immediate outcomes and points of contact with the Lisp Workshop (simply "the workshop", or "die Werkstatt"), which entails the Logo Workshop. It provides insights into the development process and its objectives of

• implementing a comprehensive Logo environment as mediating educational tool of tools,
• gaining deeper insights into the targeted programming language by implementing it in Common Lisp and gradually extend it,
• gaining deeper insights into the host language, by solving the problem of implementing a programming language and its environment,
• developing a theoretically informed educational framework for the targeted environment by connecting to the Logo research and development,
• developing a theoretically informed educational framework on the basis of the host language, both for teacher education, and for use in classrooms—as an alternative to Logo as well as a progression.

From the cLogos Charter

Mission Statement

As one conceptual instrument, language and representation on the road to this theory and practice, cLogos is a faithful, living implementation of Berkeley Logo designed to preserve Logo’s pedagogical depth while extending its expressive power for contemporary learners and systems.

Its mission is to support thinking with symbols, structures, and actions -- whether those actions move a turtle, transform a word, reshape a list, or construct a visual form:

cLogos:

• treats textual Logo as a first-class medium for rigorous symbolic reasoning,
• treats turtle geometry as one concrete, spatial embodiment of those same ideas,
• and treats visual-syntactic forms as alternative representations of a shared underlying semantics.

Text, motion, and symbol are not stages to outgrow; they are parallel ways of thinking.

cLogos honors Logo as a way of thinking, not merely as a language:

• textbooks are specifications, not examples,
• extensions are explicit, local, and pedagogically motivated,
• and power is introduced without concealing mechanism.

cLogos exists to let people think clearly, honestly, and joyfully -- with symbols, with turtles, and beyond.

cLogos is not trying to make programming easier; it is trying to make structural thinking expressible at the level at which it is already being formed in the learner’s mind.

Charter Text | Contribution Guidelines