RE: mindstorm

["Alain Tougas" <alain@xxxxxxx>]

Hi!

I guess you wish to compare MicroWorlds EX Robotics and Mndstorms, the
programming environment provided with the RCX Brick.

Mindstorms is an icon based programming envoronment dedicated to the
programming of the RCX brick. The icons are "building blocks" just like
words are building blocks in a text instruction. Simple instructions are...
simple to program, but the iconic syntax (how you "arrange" icons to build
an instruction) gets quite complex quite rapidly when you do anything above
"basic". It may look simpler for the first hour... but not necessarily on
the long run. Imagine yourself trying to write "the dog eats food" in
ancient egyptian pictograms... not imagine writing "the dog eats food when
the lion is not there, but only three times a day, and that for five days in
a row". Icons may be cuter, but plain text is easier, and more flexible.

MicroWorlds is text based (the Logo language). The software itself is very
visual (icons, dialog boxes and all) but the instructions per say are text
based. On the positive side:
1. if you know some Logo, you already know the syntax for doing robotics
2. it's more powerful than Mindstorms in many ways
3. you can create projects that contain a robotics component and a screen
component (the MicroWorlds project), the screen project interacting with the
physical device, in both directions
4. if you do not have any Logo expertise, whatever you learn while doing
robotics is 100% transferable to the "non robotics" side of MicroWorlds (as
a Logo programming environment).



-----Original Message-----
From: mwforum-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:mwforum-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Burke,
Bridget -CKJH
Sent: January 2, 2007 11:03 AM
To: mwforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: mindstorm



I just saw an article in out local paper on Lego-robotics competition
for junior high students. The students involved were using a Lego brick
to program their robot. Can anyone tell me the difference between the
Lego brick and the MicroWorlds-robotics products? Are they both
programmed in logo? I would like to try this out.