ToonTalk facts for kids

ToonTalk is a special computer programming system. It was made especially for children to learn how to code. The "Toon" in its name comes from "cartoon" because it uses animated characters. These characters include friendly robots that you can teach to do things just by showing them!

ToonTalk is one of the few successful programming systems that uses a method called "concurrent constraint logic programming" outside of universities. This means it helps programs work on many tasks at the same time.

What is ToonTalk?

ToonTalk was created by a person named Ken Kahn in 1995. It was first released as a software package called the ToonTalk IDE. This software was sold all over the world from 1996 to 2009. After 2009, the way ToonTalk works was shared with everyone. The software itself also became free to use.

ToonTalk on the Web

In 2014, a new version of ToonTalk was made. It's called ToonTalk Reborn for the Web. This version uses JavaScript and HTML5. This means you can use it right in your web browser! It works on almost any modern browser.

ToonTalk Reborn is a bit different from the older desktop version. With the web version, your ToonTalk programs can work with different parts of a web page. They can also use cool browser features. These include playing sounds, showing videos, changing how things look, and even understanding your voice! You can also connect it to web services like Google Drive. ToonTalk Reborn is completely free and its code is open for anyone to see and use.

ToonTalk in Schools

Even after it stopped being a commercial product, ToonTalk was used a lot in schools and for research. Many universities and research groups used it. For example, the London Knowledge Lab and the Institute of Education used it in projects. These projects involved partners from many countries. This includes places like Portugal, Sweden, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Italy.

Researchers in Sweden and Portugal also found ToonTalk very interesting. One researcher, Mikael Kindborg, looked at how ToonTalk programs could be shown in a clear way. Another, Leonel Morgado, studied if very young children, who can't read yet, could learn to program with ToonTalk.

How ToonTalk Works

ToonTalk was inspired by other programming ideas. These include the Janus programming language and the Actor model.

A main idea in ToonTalk is the "bird/nest" pair. Imagine you have a bird and its nest. When you give something to a bird, it flies to its nest. Then it puts the item there. If there are already things in the nest, the bird puts the new item underneath them. After that, the bird flies back to you. This bird/nest system helps different parts of your program talk to each other.

Robots and Boxes

In ToonTalk, a program is like a set of rules. Each rule has a "head" and a "tail." The head is like a puzzle piece that needs to match something. In ToonTalk's cartoon world, a rule looks like a robot. A whole program is like a team of robots working together.

The things these robots work on are called "boxes." A box can have many holes or sections where you can put things. These "things" can be numbers, text, other boxes, robot teams, birds, or nests.

When a team of robots works on a box, they try to find a rule that matches the box. If no rule matches, the process pauses. If a rule matches, the robot follows that rule. The rule can either finish the task or tell the robot team to keep working on the box.

Nests and Futures

Sometimes, a rule might need an empty nest, but the nest already has something in it. In this case, the process pauses. It waits until a bird puts something new on the nest. When something is placed on the nest, the rule then works with that new item. This way, nests can be used to plan for things that will happen later in your program. This is a bit like creating a "future" event.

ToonTalk can be understood in different ways. It can be seen as telling the computer exactly what to do, step by step. Or, it can be seen as describing what you want to happen. ToonTalk doesn't let different parts of your program change the same memory at the same time. This makes it simpler and safer.

The bird/nest system is similar to how "actors" communicate in the Actor model. But ToonTalk adds more power. You can pass nests around, and a program can hold more than one nest. ToonTalk also makes sure that messages arrive in the order they were sent. However, it can also mix up messages from different sources if needed.