https://numinous.productions/ttft/#serious-work
We described Norvig’s essay as an “interactive essay”. It’s useful to have a more specific term, to distinguish it from other interactive forms, like the mnemonic medium. In this essay, we’ll use the term “executable book”This is, of course, a placeholder term. “Executable essay” would in many ways be more natural, though unfortunately that term is perhaps even more naturally interpreted as meaning “web page”, in the current context.. We won’t define this precisely here; definition is not the point. Rather, the point is to try to better understand the potential of media forms which combine prose and code in something like this form.
Seymour Papert, one of the principal creators of the Logo programming language, had a remarkable aspiration for Logo. Logo is sometimes described as a “programming language for children”, and people sometimes think Papert was mostly interested in helping children learn how to program. But that wasn’t Papert’s principal intent. Rather, Papert wanted to create an immersive environment – a kind of “Mathland” – in which children could be immersed in mathematical ideas. In essence, children could learn differential geometry by going to Mathland.
It’s a beautiful aspiration, and Logo contains many striking ideas. But as far as we know, no professional differential geometer (or, more generally, mathematician) uses Logo seriously as a tool in their work. And upon reflection that seems troubling. If Logo genuinely expresses the ideas of differential geometry, why don’t differential geometers use it? You start to wonder: might it be that Logo leaves out important ideas about differential geometry, maybe even the most important ideas about differential geometry? After all, while mathematically trained, Papert wasn’t himself an accomplished differential geometer. How would he even have known what to include? And certainly most of the people interested in Logo aren’t qualified to make that judgment.