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Getting to Know Turtle

Darren Jones

Python Turtle for Beginners
Darren Jones 01:47

Recommended Tutorial Course Slides (.pdf) Sample Code (.zip)

00:00 Getting to Know turtle. When I was young, home computers were simpler and more diverse than the mostly Windows- and Mac-based ecosystems we see today. With that simplicity came accessibility.

00:13 Nearly everyone knew how to do some programming, as the means to do it were built into these systems and available at boot time. In addition, there was an educational language created in the 1960s called Logo, which incorporated turtle graphics, controlling a line-drawing robot.

00:31 While originally this was a physical robot with a pen and two motors to drive it like the one you see here, there were many other implementations of turtle graphics where the graphics were controlled in the same way but appeared onscreen.

00:45 Python turtle makes use of onscreen graphics, so you won’t have to buy any hardware. This is reminiscent of those 1980s home micros, where you’re just a few lines of code away from drawing shapes and patterns on the screen. turtle is a part of the Python standard library.

01:02 This means that it’s built into Python, so if you have Python installed and running, there’s no more to do. It provides an on-screen pen, allowing you to move the virtual turtle about and see where it’s been. turtle provides straightforward, accessible graphics, allowing beginners to get to grips with issuing commands to a computer and seeing the results instantly. As such, it’s an ideal route to take with kids as an introduction to programming, but it’s not limited to a younger audience.

01:31 The instant visual feedback allows learners to understand programming concepts such as loops when using the library.

01:39 Now that you’ve seen what turtle is good for, let’s take a look at what you’ll need to follow along with the code in this course.

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