Turtle System 10.3
A Friendly Introduction to Programming
The new version of the Turtle System is now available to download from the link below. Click on any of the images to see a full-size screenshot.
This version is by far the most powerful, enabling the creation of visual designs, animations, and interactive games (or other "apps") that can be run within the system itself or mounted on your own web pages. Further work is under way to enable them to be run independently on mobile devices. Version 10 also goes well beyond the previous versions in terms of programming education, with a wider variety of data types and greater access to the underlying "Turtle Machine".
The new Turtle System currently uses a Pascal-style programming syntax (as used in systems such as Delphi, Modula and Oberon). But it will shortly be available in a form which allows the choice between a Pascal and Java-style syntax (as used also in systems such as C and C++). Future ideas include a Python-style syntax, since one educational theme of these systems is to show how programming skills are generic rather than language-specific: once you have learned to program with a good understanding of the concepts, it is generally easy to move to a different language.
A Java-style system, dating from 2004, is available at Turtle Java 8.05. For the older 2003 Pascal-style system, go to Turtle Pascal 7.0. Both of these are provided with full online documentation (including comprehensive help, learning materials, and exercises), in the old Windows Help format.