Karel - A programming language for absolute beginners

in StemSocial2 years ago

Karel is an educational programming language that is used to teach children about programming. The language was developed by Richard Pattis in the early 80s. The program is named after Karel Čapek, a Czech writer who wrote the play R.U.R., which introduced the word robot for the first time.

The idea behind Karel is to make programming easy and intuitive for children by giving them instructions in a form of simple English sentences with some syntax added to it.

How does Karel Work

Karel is a robot that has been programmed to move around in an environment and do things in that environment.

The instructions in Karel are given to the robot in a form of a sequence of commands, which are executed one after the other. These commands tell Karel what to do, where to go, or what can happen next.

Karel commands

In Karel, there are two types of commands:

  • Standard commands: these are the commands that every robot should know and they are always available. For example, "move".

  • Custom commands: these are the commands that a programmer can create. They can be used to teach a robot new skills or do more complex tasks. For example, "jump" or "run".

Here are some examples of some more Standard Karel's commands:

move() - tells Karel to move forward (or backward, left, or right)

turn() - tells Karel to turn left or right

pickup() - tells Karel to pick up the object that

Usage of Karel in Robotics

Karel can and is used for programming robots, which are then used to do tasks that are too difficult or dangerous for humans

This programming language has been largely forgotten until recently when it was rediscovered by a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania.

The team found that this programming language is still relevant today, not only because it can be used to control robots but also because it can be used in other fields such as education, science, and engineering.

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