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Logo is one of those excellent ideas that has to be used to be appreciated. It is a simple yet powerful language that can be used by very young children, yet quickly teaches complex concepts like procedures and recursion, as well as an understanding of mathematical and geometrical rules that underlie much graphical work.

Snail Logo is a good implementation of the language, containing all the essential features. It comes with a small 26-page manual that explains everything in a comprehensive way, though its organisation is a little confusing.

However, neither the manual nor the menu which drives the Snail Logo system could easily be understood by a child under the age of about ten or eleven, possibly even older, so as an educational tool the system is limited.

The other major fault of this system is that it is written in Basic. Writing an interpreter for one language in another interpreted language which is itself rather slow produces some painfully slow programs.

N.W.