Google celebrated the 50th anniversary of Logo, the world’s first programming language designed for kids, on Monday with a Doodle that celebrates kids coding languages and is aimed at teaching children to code.
In an interactive Doodle, called “Coding for Carrots,” users help an animated rabbit navigate a block maze. The rabbit hops from block to block in response to increasingly complex code sequences the game directs its players to input. That’s not so different from how kids coding language Logo worked.
Designed in 1967 by Seymour Papert and a team of researchers at MIT, the pioneer of kids coding languages helped kids learn about math by inputting commands that would direct an on-screen or electronic turtle. MIT’s Champika Fernando, who worked on Coding for Carrots with Google, said she was 9 years old when she first coded through Papert’s program.
“It makes me happy to think of all of the nine-year-olds who will get their first coding experience playing with today’s Doodle,” Fernando said. “My hope is that people will find this first experience appealing and engaging, and they’ll be encouraged to go further.”
