jslogo VS Apple-II_MiSTer

For anyone who wants to give LOGO a try, there's a really nice browser-based, javascript-implementation live at https://calormen.com/jslogo/ . Source for it can be found at https://github.com/inexorabletash/jslogo .

LOGO's great. It was my first introduction to programming back in 3rd grade in the 80s and definitely helped shape my eventual arc as a programmer. And honestly, it's just lots of fun to play with and explore.

* JSLogo - Logo in Javascript: [https://github.com/inexorabletash/jslogo]. See the project's README.md for more links.

Yeah, FPGAs are so accurate the MiSTer's Apple II core can't even write to disk.

It looks like there's an Apple II core for Mister: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Apple-II_MiSTer

I also think a slightly different way to go here is an arduino kit. Even as an adult, I got some kind of ardunio kit with a bunch of parts that got me more interested in wiring & coding. I like it because it gives you the code and parts to get things working, but then, you have a bunch of stuff left over to expand on it. If you don't like coding, you can reuse the same code and build out the hardware, and vice versa. That is definitely more work and less play than Number Munchers though. You'll probably have to do some of the stuff with your kids, depending on how curious they are about this stuff. I've seen things that look like simpler arduino kits meant for teaching younger kids similar concepts, but I don't know how good they are.

I think a synthesizer is good, too. A cheap FM synth with a bunch of dials lets you play real songs, exercise your creativity and maybe learn some science skills by mistake like an old computer with a BASIC interpreter. There's probably software solutions geared towards infotainment as well.