In 1981, Richard Pattis wrote a delightful little book titled "Karel the Robot, a Gentle Introduction to the Art of Programming." Pattis's "Karel the Robot" was named after the author Karel Capek, who popularized the word "robot" in his play "Rossum's Universal Robots". Pattis's approach was to introduce a robot who could follow 5 basic instructions and be taught to accomplish tasks of increasing complexity.
A few years ago, a first implementation of "Karel the Robot" in Python was created and called PyKarel. A second, newer implementation is called Guido van Robot (GvR for short), and is available at gvr.sourceforge.net. Work is currently underway by the developpers of GvR to produce a new-and-improved version. I have been working on my own (better ;-) version (sometimes collaborating with the GvR folks) in order to learn Python. It is now 90% finished. It is meant to be a complete environment to learn about programming concepts, from simple sequences of instruction to OOP. Given the origin of Pattis's name (Rossum's Universal Robot) and the name of Python's BDFL, I find it difficult to think of a better name than Guido van Robot to name a programming environment in which one uses Python to teach a robot new tricks! (Hat's off to Steve Howell for this one). Yet, I want a "clever" name for my version. Any suggestions? Andre Roberge -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
