Actor-Lab is a program that visualizes the Lego Mindstorms internal logic through visual flowcharts. The ideas underlying actor-lab are derived from the event-driven, message-passing computer languages that began with the actor based languages devised by Hewit. Actor-lab requires constant communication with a programmable brick (e.g. the RCX) via an infra-red link. This means that the user has to mount the programmable brick vertically for models that move about, and hold the tower in some form of gantry crane. Actor-lab shows the user in real-time what is happening on the programmable brick, including simulation of motors, sensors, lights, and sounds. One can also add controls at the bottom of the screen to give oneself real-time control of your program/model. There is a similar program from Lego called Robolab, where one can actually download programs to the Lego programmable brick.
Notice that there is one control that cannot be edited. This control is Power OFF or Stop.
An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, and a debugger. Some IDEs, such as NetBeans and Eclipse, contain the necessary compiler, interpreter, or both; others, such as SharpDevelop and Lazarus, do not.
Lego is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously colored interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things.
Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP), created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at Xerox PARC by Learning Research Group (LRG) scientists, including Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Adele Goldberg, Ted Kaehler, Diana Merry, and Scott Wallace.
In computer programming, event-driven programming is a programming paradigm in which the flow of the program is determined by events such as user actions, sensor outputs, or message passing from other programs or threads. Event-driven programming is the dominant paradigm used in graphical user interfaces and other applications that are centered on performing certain actions in response to user input. This is also true of programming for device drivers.
Lego Mindstorms is a discontinued hardware and software structure which develops programmable robots based on Lego building blocks. Each version includes an intelligent brick, a set of modular sensors and motors, and parts from the Lego Technic line to create the mechanical systems. The system is controlled by the intelligent brick, which act as the brain of the mechanical system.
Visual Basic (VB), originally called Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET), is a multi-paradigm, object-oriented programming language, implemented on .NET, Mono, and the .NET Framework. Microsoft launched VB.NET in 2002 as the successor to its original Visual Basic language, the last version of which was Visual Basic 6.0. Although the ".NET" portion of the name was dropped in 2005, this article uses "Visual Basic [.NET]" to refer to all Visual Basic languages released since 2002, in order to distinguish between them and the classic Visual Basic. Along with C# and F#, it is one of the three main languages targeting the .NET ecosystem. Microsoft updated its VB language strategy on 6 Feb 2023 stating that VB is a stable language now and Microsoft will keep maintaining it.
In computing, an icon is a pictogram or ideogram displayed on a computer screen in order to help the user navigate a computer system. The icon itself is a quickly comprehensible symbol of a software tool, function, or a data file, accessible on the system and is more like a traffic sign than a detailed illustration of the actual entity it represents. It can serve as an electronic hyperlink or file shortcut to access the program or data. The user can activate an icon using a mouse, pointer, finger, or voice commands. Their placement on the screen, also in relation to other icons, may provide further information to the user about their usage. In activating an icon, the user can move directly into and out of the identified function without knowing anything further about the location or requirements of the file or code.
In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an early form of human–computer interaction, before the advent of modern conventional graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Like GUIs, they may use the entire screen area and accept mouse and other inputs. They may also use color and often structure the display using special graphical characters such as ┌ and ╣, referred to in Unicode as the "box drawing" set. The modern context of use is usually a terminal emulator.
In computing, a visual programming language or block coding is a programming language that lets users create programs by manipulating program elements graphically rather than by specifying them textually. A VPL allows programming with visual expressions, spatial arrangements of text and graphic symbols, used either as elements of syntax or secondary notation. For example, many VPLs are based on the idea of "boxes and arrows", where boxes or other screen objects are treated as entities, connected by arrows, lines or arcs which represent relations.
Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW) is a system-design platform and development environment for a visual programming language from National Instruments.
A graphical widget in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through direct manipulation to read or edit information about an application. User interface libraries such as Windows Presentation Foundation, Qt, GTK, and Cocoa, contain a collection of controls and the logic to render these.
brickOS is an open-source operating system created by Markus Noga as firmware to operate as an alternative software environment for the Lego Mindstorms Robotic Invention System [14]. brickOS is the first open-source software made for Lego Mindstorms robots. It is embedded with a C/C++-based and a Java-based environment for RCX program through utilizing g++ and jack toolchain. It uses a Hitachi H8 cross compiler assembler as its primary toolchain.
A collaborative real-time editor is a type of collaborative software or web application which enables real-time collaborative editing, simultaneous editing, or live editing of the same digital document, computer file or cloud-stored data – such as an online spreadsheet, word processing document, database or presentation – at the same time by different users on different computers or mobile devices, with automatic and nearly instantaneous merging of their edits.
Robot software is the set of coded commands or instructions that tell a mechanical device and electronic system, known together as a robot, what tasks to perform. Robot software is used to perform autonomous tasks. Many software systems and frameworks have been proposed to make programming robots easier.
Alt+Tab ↹ is the common name for a keyboard shortcut that has been in Microsoft Windows since Windows 2.0 (1987). This shortcut switches between application-level windows without using the mouse; hence it was named Task Switcher.
Lego Mindstorms NXT is a programmable robotics kit released by Lego on August 2, 2006. It replaced the first-generation Lego Mindstorms kit, which was called the Robotics Invention System. The base kit ships in two versions: the Retail Version and the Education Base Set. It comes with the NXT-G programming software, or optionally LabVIEW for Lego Mindstorms. A variety of unofficial languages exist, such as NXC, NBC, leJOS NXJ, and RobotC. The second generation of the set, the Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0, was released on August 1, 2009, featuring a color sensor and other upgraded capabilities. The third generation, the EV3, was released in September 2013.
Scratch is a high-level block-based visual programming language and website aimed primarily at children as an educational tool, with a target audience of ages 8 to 16. Users on the site, called Scratchers, can create projects on the website using a block-like interface. Projects can be exported to standalone HTML5, Android apps, Bundle (macOS) and EXE files using external tools. Scratch was conceived and designed through collaborative National Science Foundation grants awarded to Mitchell Resnick and Yasmin Kafai. The service is developed by the MIT Media Lab, and has been translated into 70+ languages, and is used in most parts of the world. Scratch is taught and used in after-school centers, schools, and colleges, as well as other public knowledge institutions. As of 15 February 2023, community statistics on the language's official website show more than 123 million projects shared by over 103 million users, over 804 million total projects ever created, and more than 95 million monthly website visits.
Emacs, originally named EMACS, is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, self-documenting, real-time display editor". Development of the first Emacs began in the mid-1970s, and work on its direct descendant, GNU Emacs, is ongoing; its latest version is 29.1, released July 2023.
Open Roberta is a project within the German education initiative "Roberta—Learning with robots", initiated by Fraunhofer IAIS, which is an institute belonging to the Fraunhofer Society. With Open Roberta Fraunhofer IAIS is looking to encourage children to code by using robots such as Lego Mindstorms, and other programmable hardware systems such as Arduino, BBC micro:bit, and the Calliope mini. The Cloud-approach of the Open Roberta Lab is intended to simplify programming concepts and make it easier for teachers and schools to teach how to code. Open Roberta is free and does not require any installation. The project was initially founded with €1m by Google.org. Users from up to 120 countries now access the platform.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)  | This Lego-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
