> "The LOGO system supports two different (by no means disjoint) environments: the Turtle, Graphics and Musicbox world (ie: peripheral devices which are controlled by a command language) and the LISP world."

Whelp, the lack of an Oxford comma there really through me for a loop until I continued reading. Anyway...

> "Our experiences, especially with young students, indicate that programming in LOGO may serve as a bridge between natural language communication and reasoning and the formal and abstract symbols and reasoning in mathematics and programming languages."

If anyone is interested in this, there are the following books:

* Exploring Language with Logo: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262570653

* Visual Modeling with Logo: A Structured Approach to Seeing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262530694

* Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics: https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificia...

* Computer Science Logo Style: http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html

It's disappointing to me that Logo died out and didn't remain around or evolve, and I find it a bit sad that many kids are getting introduced to programming via something like Python or Scratch. I feel there's still space for Logo, and it would be cool to see an easily downloadable and installable version of it.

* How to Code: Simple Data and How to Code: Complex Data on edX. Taught by Gregor Kiczales, of Common Lisp and CLOS fame. Uses Racket and graphical programs to teach.

https://www.edx.org/course/how-to-code-simple-data

https://www.edx.org/course/how-to-code-complex-data

* The From Nand to Teris project, The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles book, and/or Coursera course. Builds a hardware stack for a CPU and then a software stack (assembler, VM, high-level language).

https://www.nand2tetris.org/

https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer

https://www.coursera.org/learn/nand2tetris2

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-second-Pri...

* The How to Design Programs book. What the edX course above is based upon.

https://htdp.org/

https://www.amazon.com/How-Design-Programs-Introduction-Prog...

* Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP). Uses Scheme. One can use Racket with the `#lang sicp` language.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html

https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Pro...

YouTube playlist of the course by the authors: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE18841CABEA24090

* Thinking as Computation: A First Course. Uses Prolog to solve problems of thinking.

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Computation-First-Course-Pre...

https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hector/PublicTCSlides.pdf

* Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics (shares an author with SICP). Uses Logo to explore turtle geometry/graphics. Can use any modern Logo implementation.

https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificia...

https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4663/Turtle-GeometryThe-Co...

* Starting Forth. Uses Forth.

https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/

https://www.amazon.com/Starting-Forth-Leo-Brodie-ebook/dp/B0...

* Learning Processing: A Beginner's Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction and also The Nature of Code: Simulating Natural Systems with Processing. Uses Processing and p5.js (the JavaScript version of Processing).

http://learningprocessing.com/

https://natureofcode.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Processing-Beginners-Program...

https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Code-Simulating-Natural-Proces...

The author's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/TheCodingTrain

https://processing.org/

The book Turtle Geometry [1] by Harold Abelson of SICP fame is a pretty cool exploration of mathematics all the way up to non-euclidean geometry using turtle graphics.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificia...

My favorite Logo-for-relative-grownups work is https://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificia... -- yes, with the same coauthor as SICP. It's about math more than CS, and it's really good: by the last chapter you're figuring out motion in general relativity. It has a spirit of DIY exploration unlike any other math book I'd seen at the time.

Something more than a weekend splurge:

Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics

http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial...

...and I've not yet tried it, but netlogo sounds interesting.

https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

It might be fun to look at LOGO (maybe UCBLogo[1], free books included) for a first programming language. This has a first-person (turtle) view on a GUI that you move around to make shapes and do math/physics. The idea is that when programming it will be easier for the programmer to associate themselves with the turtle and interaction/exploration in the language will be natural.

The Logo way is pretty different from conventional programming models because it was tailored to be more intuitive than conventional languages like C, JavaScript, or VB. It still offers access to complex, higher order programming concepts like algorithms, AI, automata, etc. Harold Abelson from MIT (SICP) wrote a cool book that covers math/physics in Logo, too.[2]

The creator of the language has an awesome book[3] on how computers can enhance pedagogy and someone wrote a cool blog post on programming for children that mentioned it too[4].

[1] http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful...

[4] http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/

I find Hal Abelson's book Turtle Geometry [1] fascinating. It describes a dialect of Logo (the graphical routines could probably be implemented relatively easily in Python/Tkinter or Tcl/Tk or something like Processing).

Once the basics are described, then it uses them to go on to explore things like non-euclidian geometry (and maybe topology?).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial...

Learning to build or repair a car would probably improve your understanding of thermodynamics, aerodynamics, momentum, etc. Likewise, writing a computer program that simulates the motion of a planet around a star or renders 3D graphics might improve your understanding of classical mechanics and any number of topics in math, just to name a few examples; cf.

http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful...

http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Classical-Mec...

http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial...

This is not to mention that learning how to program a computer is just another tool to put in your bags of tricks for solving problems in any of the domains you mentioned (some better suited than others, of course).