--- Geoff Roberts <geoffrob(a)stmarks.pp.catholic.edu.au> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan_dicks(a)yahoo.com>
> > > I don't have any Uni level CS under my belt, and that seems
> > > to be what's needed to comprehend it.
> >
> > Rubbish.
> > I saw that we had a UNIX machine nestled amongst the VAXen...
> You are fortunate in having had access to such systems early in the piece.
That is true. I was also fortunate enough to sieze the opportunity. Of
the handful of college barely-over-minimum-wage backup operators that
paraded through SRC, only two of us are making a living in IT. Most of
the operators mounted the tapes, printed the labels and read trashy novels
while the TU-78 did its stuff for 6 hours. The other geek and I wrote
programs on one of the other systems while the main system was being backed
up. We both ended up as full-time programmers for the company's VMS and
UNIX products. Several people had access to the programming resources.
Most did nothing with the opportunity.
> > I never learned a programming language in school, only by rolling up my
> > sleeves, going into larval mode once again and banging out a fun project.
>
> Interesting. I got the impression that the knowledgeable C programmers
> around either
> a) Worked in a professional computing environment and 'worked their way up'
> or
> b) Went to university and studied CS there.
> or
> c) Both.
I got my first job writing 6502 assembler for the C-64 in 1982 before I
was old enough to drive. My mother had to drop me off and work and sign
my contracts. I realize this is atypical, but there it is. I did start
off at University with a double CS and EE major. I took one "FORTRAN for
Engineers" class and after two years in the program switched my major and
earned a BA in History (while learning to program in C on the side at work).
So given your above model of the anticipated career paths of C programmers,
I would most closely fall into A). I learned C at work, doing a project
to automate one of my assigned job tasks after having been a professional
assembler programmer for two to three years. I did it by asking the "real"
programmers at work, exploring source code and reading K&R cover to cover
several times. I still tell people to start with that book, BTW. It's
a goldmine of information.
> C doesn't strike me as a language that could be 'self taught' without prior
> knowledge of a lot of things that you don't see outside that kind of
> environment.
I'm not sure I agree here.
> All the books I ever saw on C seemed to expect that you already have a
> working knowledge of data structures architecture of the machine etc.
Have you read K&R? It assumes a PDP-11/VAXish machine architecture, but
it covers the basic data structures, linked lists, multi-dimensional arrays,
strings, pointers to arrays of pointers. More than enough stuff to get you
into buckets of trouble.
> TP was perhaps just better documented for ignorant newbies than C is.
I did work with TP at one job. The programmer there would certainly
be described as a newbie. He was a business major, not a geek. I have
no idea how he ever produced that much working code except by pure
force of will. It was extremely inelegant.
> That you have 'self taught' on it regardless indicates otherwise, so I will
> revise my opinion. However I must agree that it does seem to (me at least,
> and I saw a another response to my original post that agreed) to be a "write
> only" language unless it is very well commented.
Again, that depends. I've seen some stuff that was absolutely unintellegible
without comments (and not very understandable even _with_ comments) and other
things that are so idiomatic and commonly used that adding comments disturbs
the flow to the point of hiding what's happening.
There are other languages that are _more_ "write only" (APL comes to mind
immediately), but I do agree that zero comments makes C extremely difficult
to understand.
> Er, I should point out that I don't/didn't intend to start a holy war here...
It tends to happen when anyone makes somewhat broad and somewhat firm
statements about anything in this biz, editors, OSes _and_ languages,
to name a few.
> I'm merely relating my experiences. We all seem to have our favourites, I
> guess I like TP because it was the first 'real' language (something compiled,
_That_ is typical in my experience.
=====
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The original webpage address is still going away. The
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I have recently found the time to start playing with my VAXen
again, and have been struck by a bit of a confusing dilemma:
Why is it that when I attempt to copy a large tree from any place
to another under VMS 7.2, it always copies as follows:
This command:
backup dub3:[000000...]*.*;* dub2:
causes vms to copy a directory structure that looks like this:
[000000.000TOOLS.AXP]file1...file2...etc
[000000.000TOOLS.VAX]file3...file4...etc
to this:
[000000.000TOOLS] (empty)
[000000.AXP]file1...file2...etc
[000000.VAX]file3...file4...etc
How do I get it to copy the whole *tree* in a directory or on a
disk to a whole other part of the system? I tried reading the help
available on copy and backup, but I haven't been able to figure out how to
copy a whole tree from one place to another.
Thanks for your help!
Greg Linder
fluke(a)mcs.net
>Hmpf! A bad programmer can make an awful mess in _ANY_
>language, including ADA.
Absolutely... it is possible to write well in any language
(including BASIC, contrary to many people's opinions) and it
is possible to write poorly in any language. It depends more
on the skill of the programmer...
...but I think I better stop here before entirely rekindling
the language wars...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
>C's abstraction begins to bore me and it seems a write only language.
Unfortunately, it appears that those who advocate and write in C
and other such structured languages appear to have lost the ability
to comment their code (at least it seems that way from all the code
I look at at work -- I would say a mere 5% is really commented).
They appear to assume that C code is itself sufficient commenting...
It doesn't work.
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
You're right about what rises to the top, Allison, and I'd add that the fact
that teachers are, in general, represented by a "union" which emphasizes the
normal distribution just as the environment in which they work does, by
their nature desiring neither accolade nor criticism. Being good doesn't
reap the rewards it should in an environment where being good is good, but
being average is better.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Allison J Parent <allisonp(a)world.std.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Friday, March 10, 2000 5:56 PM
Subject: Re: Re: languages (Teachers)
><Allison, I believe you've been sold a bill of goods.
>
>Looked for myself in my locale.
>
><First of all, look at what a teacher has to do for his/her education and
>>>>>snipped/
>
>I know far to many doing the real thing...
>
>Like someone else said but I'll say differently: Like cream that rises to
>the top, so does the scum. We see the exceptional asses and heros, the
>average teacher is more in the world of trying not to be disenchanted with
>to many rules, too few resources and an overabundance of students.
>
><didn't do so well in high school, mainly due to lack of ambition and
><diligence, didn't want to work too hard in college, and, of course,
couldn'
><get into a good college. Fortunately, a good college isn't required. On
><top of that, he's chosen a niche in which he only has to work a 6-hour day
><and he only has to do that 183 days a year to get full salary and,
><ultimately a generous pension.
>
>Well your experience is different. You wish to see the scum and you do,
>those that do the job are missed and those that exceed the mark are
>ignored.
>
>I don't for one second believe that our educational system is up to stuff.
>If anything I'd be glad to post my parting address to my HS class, it
>wasn't complmetary to skills taught in 1971. The briefest words I'd still
>say is I knew Algebra, trig and could write a term paper that would knock
>your socks off but... income tax preparation and employment paperwork
>(W4, resume, applications) were a mystery. I was trained to go to college.
>Thankfully I persued both academic and vocational path in parallel.
>
>
>Allison
>
This comment (not specifically, but as it aligns with several others) serves
to show how easy it is to get out of touch with what's happening in the
institutions within which most of us spent 10-12 years of our lives.
It's true that some (few, however) teachers are present before the majority
of students are in the school. It's also true that some teachers remain
present after the students are dismissed at the end of the school day.
However, I'd add a couple of things to the already foul mix.
First of all, if my skills as an observer are not totally off, and I made
records of most of this, by the way, the ones who are present when the kids
show up are generally the same ones who are present after they've left. In
the three schools I observed, the faculty ranged in size between 105 and
198. In the cases where I made long-term records, the ones who were present
early were, with a couple of specific exceptions, the same ones as were
present late in the day, numbering typically 5 in the smallest school to 8
in the largest. In one high school, one of the teachers who stayed late was
married to a middle school teacher and she was early for the same reason
that he was late. They took one car and she dropped him off at the high
school just in time, but then arrived early. He stayed late because she
didn't get off until somewhat after he did, so he stayed late about the same
amount as she arrived early.
For a goodly period of time, I was in one school or another almost every
day, between my boys' fights and the various committee meetings, and trying
to teach teachers to do something beyond cute little calendars, etc, with
their computers. I had the advantage that I had no social bond to any of
the teachers, hence didn't have to let the fact that I liked one or another
and perhaps disliked yet another influence my assessment of their behavior
and performance.
If you ask anyone who was present, I was equally harsh with everyone,
pounding on the administrators to be more efficient at the same time that I
urged the teachers not to be so self-serving in their attitudes and, above
all, in their negotiations.
I admired the teachers who taught me along the way, and certainly harbor no
acrimony toward those who didn't. All in all, they were a tolerant and
longsuffering lot as well as being sufficiently devoted to turn many
rough-hewn youngsters into decent scholars. I remember many of my own
teachers fondly and greatly appreciate what they did to make it possible for
me to realize my current circumstances,
Those were not the teachers of today, however. It's true they now have
neither the respect nor the authority that was afforded their predecessors,
but they haven't the determination and self-respect that was common to the
teachers I remember. You needn't wander any further than the teachers'
lounge to learn that they regard their peers and sometimes even themselves
as relatively lazy and lacking in ambition. I didn't invent this view of
our current crop, either, by the way, as it is reflected in the news almost
daily.
In general it appears the Republicans see them as may become if their course
isn't altered, while the Democrats see them as the democrats wish they would
become.
I personally would support an effort to limit the length of time a teacher
can teach to five years at a stretch. After this time is up, I'd require
they go out into the world and do something else for five years, at the end
of which I'd see they were paid as much as they got for doing whatever they
were doing, so long as it wasn't teaching. After five years, do it again .
. . Each year, I'd also dismiss the bottom 10% based on performance, but
without prejudice, allowing them to take 5 years to do something else, and
replace them with new graduates. After five years they could reapply with
the assumption that they had learned something valuable in the interim.
I've heard stories about fellows like your EE/Music double major. I've
never seen one up close though. It's probably a California-ism. That place
is like another planet. I like to visit, but I wouldn't like to live
there.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Christopher Finney <af-list(a)wfi-inc.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Friday, March 10, 2000 4:28 PM
Subject: Re: Re: languages (Teachers)
>This is total bullshit. Total. A very good, long-time friend of mine did 5
>years at University to come out with a dual EE/Music Comp. degree and
>walked into a $60k per year job with a cutting-edge tech company. He works
>8 hours a day, maybe 2 hours extra at home to straighten out paperwork.
>Maybe. In addition to his base salary, he receives stock options that just
>about double his yearly salary. He is 27 and owns a house in Huntington
>Beach, less than three blocks from the shore. He just returned from a
>three-week vacation in Italy, after being with the company for 4 years.
>
>Anyone who kills themselves in school to walk out into a $45k per year job
>that requires *140* hours per week is not intelligent. A person who does
>this today is either a moron or a massochist. If this is what you want for
>your children, that's up to you.
>
>This is my last post on the subject. I do wonder what really soured you on
>teachers, besides your claim to have studied them so closely in the work
>environment. To demean the entire teaching profession as it exists today
>in gross generalizations shows a lack of objectivity and portrays you as
>nothing but a bitter, old crank.
>
>To that end, I'm not sure what rubs me so raw about this...usually I can
>keep my big mouth shut. But listening to someone bash a group of people
>who are generally dedicated to their profession, and who put up with poor
>materials and low salaries, makes me sick.
>
>Aaron
>
>On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>
>> Allison, I believe you've been sold a bill of goods.
>>
>> First of all, look at what a teacher has to do for his/her education and
>> later for his/her salary as compared, say, to an engineering student.
>From
>> what I've observed myself, and even more so from what I hear from my
boys,
>> both in college, the workload in a typical week for an engineering
student
>> adds up to about what an education major does in a semester. Secondly,
he
>> doesn't have to look forward to those 7 20-hour-day work-weeks for the
next
>> ten years, and he knows that he needn't worry about being fired, laid
off,
>> or much of anything else that would rock the boat. Sure, he gets about
$45K
>> after ten years, rather than the 60-75K the engineer will get, but he
only
>> has to work a 6-hour day, and he only has to do that 183 days a year to
get
>> full salary and, ultimately a generous pension.
>>
>> Secondly, look at the quality of those individuals. These are people who
>> didn't do so well in high school, mainly due to lack of ambition and
>> diligence, didn't want to work too hard in college, and, of course,
couldn't
>> get into a good college. Fortunately, a good college isn't required. On
>> top of that, he's chosen a niche in which he only has to work a 6-hour
day,
>> and he only has to do that 183 days a year to get full salary and,
>> ultimately a generous pension.
>>
>> Of course he's not into it for the money. He doesn't want to work hard
>> enough to earn a lot of money.
>>
>> Dick
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: allisonp(a)world.std.com <allisonp(a)world.std.com>
>> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
>> Date: Friday, March 10, 2000 1:38 PM
>> Subject: Re: Re: languages (Teachers)
>>
>>
>> >On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, George Rachor wrote:
>> >
>> >> >>> On Fri, 10 Mar 2000, sjm wrote:
>> >> >>>> lazy (everybody has a teacher horror story to tell). But those
who
>> >> >>>> stand out in my mind were the genuine heros. They were IN to
what
>> >> >>>> they did. They LOVED the kids. They latched on to us and
energized
>> >> >>>> us and really taught us. They made us solve problems, they made
us
>> >
>> >True.
>> >
>> >My father was a construction contractor and used to have several
teachers
>> >that worked for him during the busy summer months so they could make
>> >what my mother did as a LPN (2years college).
>> >
>> >When I left DEC I looked at teaching, I needed a masters in teaching
over
>> >any technical degrees and could expect to make 10-20thousand less a
year.
>> >It's pretty sad that that the average teacher has 4-6 years of college
>> >education and makes less than the average person with that kind of time
in
>> >a technical degreee.
>> >
>> >Allison
>> >
>> >
>>
>
--- Geoff Roberts <geoffrob(a)stmarks.pp.catholic.edu.au> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <Glenatacme(a)aol.com>
> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Friday, March 10, 2000 3:51 PM
> Subject: Re: The C programming language
>
>
> > In a message dated 03/09/2000 3:19:11 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> > Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de writes:
> >
> > > I wouldn't consider C as anything 'grown'. maybe evolved in the
> > > sense of degeneration.
> >
> > Hey, Hans, I don't get this. C is the most versatile, flexible, and
> > portable language ever devised. It permits complete control of
> > hardware while at the same time allowing elegance in program design
> > and structure.
Allowing is the keyword here. I've seen some stuff that just took my
breath away and I've also seen stuff that made me retch.
> You forgot to add "and is perfectly comprehensible to anyone with long
> experience in assembly language or machine code."
It's been said that C has all the power of assembler with all the legibility
of assembler. If you've ever taken C and compiled it on a PDP-11 and looked
at the output, you'll quickly notice that many of the "features" of the
language translate to very few instructions - it's assembler shorthand,
essentially. This, to me, is a benfit, not a detriment, but I _like_
assembler, especially PDP-11 MACRO (and it's relatives like the MC68K)
> I don't have any Uni level CS under my belt, and that seems
> to be what's needed to comprehend it.
Rubbish. My first language was BASIC (like so many kids in the late 1970s),
followed quickly by 1802 and 6502 machine language (no compiler - stuff
entered in hex), then, about six years after I started programming, C. Working
at SRC in 1984, I saw that we had a UNIX machine nestled amongst the VAXen
running VMS. It was a VAX-11/750 w/2Mb RAM and two RK07 drives. I don't have
the drives (they were discarded in 1992), but I do have _that_ 11/750
(s/n BT000354) now upgraded to 8Mb w/SI9900, Fuji Eagle, etc. We swapped out
different sets of RK07 packs to run various Unices to conform to the
customer's configuration - 4.0BSD, 4.1BSD and SYSIII, IIRC. I still have the
VAX SYSIII tapes somewhere, but who knows if they are still legible after
all this time. Anyway, way back then, I'd heard about UNIX and decided I
wanted a piece of it. I got an account, borrowed a copy of the K&R book
and used it as a reference to write my first C program. It was an
abomination as far as style goes, but it did work - it converted a text table
of board handle numbers into a formatted picture of the contents of all of
our PDP-11 and VAXen, a job I'd do today in perl and probably HTML.
What I've found from personal experience is that to really _learn_ a
programming language, I need a project to keep me going past the learning
cliff. With 6502 assembler, it was hand-compiling Scott Adams' adventure
engine from BASIC (a story I've been happily able to share with him many
years later); with Java, it's my program to calculate sunset/sunrise charts
for my Antarctic web page; with Inform it was translating Zork from MDL. It
can be a monster project or a few dozen K of source, but the important part
is having a motivational goal to complete. I never learned a programming
language in school, only by rolling up my sleeves, going into larval mode
once again and banging out a fun project.
Just for the record, I am very fond of C. Yes, atrocities have been
committed in it, but it's right up there with perl and assembler as
my favorite tools to get the job done. Just be sure that you use the
right tool for the right job.
-ethan
=====
Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to
vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com
The original webpage address is still going away. The
permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/
See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details.
__________________________________________________
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>I did the same thing, although I added a twist, I installed one of >these
>new (and dirt cheap) removable drive caddy things that you >mount an IDE
>drive inside of. I install software on a "master" disk, >which has a bulk
>copy program on it. Then I copy the entire drive >over to a built in drive
>on the same IDE cable. I have a switch on >the outside of the case that
>makes the internal drive a "master" or >slave (dpdt toggle that is wired
>with wire wrap wire to the four >pins constituting the jumper positions on
>the drive.
>
>Switch the internal drive back to "master" status and reboot. Makes >fixing
>things when my 4.5 yr old drags the entire desktop into the >recycle bin
>and flushes it a lot easier!
>
>--Chuck
Old Pentium class computers make excellent kids computers. But if you're
*really* on budget, an old Mac Plus or, if they don't like the Mac Plus'
lack of color graphics, a Mac LC would be perfect.
____________________________________________________________
David Vohs, Digital Archaeologist & Computer Historian.
Computer Collection:
"Triumph": Commodore 64C, 1802, 1541, FSD-1, GeoRAM 512, Okimate 20.
"Leela": Macintosh 128 (Plus upgrade), Nova SCSI HDD, Imagewriter II.
"Delorean": TI-99/4A.
"Monolith": Apple Macintosh Portable.
"Spectrum": Tandy Color Computer 3.
____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
I have just been given a Radio Shack TRS-80 pocket computer. It is in
'as new' condition, complete with manual and cassette interface. I
haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but am about to take it to bed
and have a look at it (Fiona will _love_ that!).
Are there many of these on the list? From a brief glance at the manual
it looks as if it is quite powerful for its size and era.
--
Regards
Pete
Hello port-vax,
So I've been looking for some way to contribute to the VAX port of NetBSD
without interfering with anyone else (and without incurring too much stress
as this is still just a hobby as yet). I decided I would try my hand at
adding support for the on-board DSSI interface on the VAX 4000/300 and the
MicroVAX/VAXServer 3400.
To further this end I have acquired the technical manuals on both CPUs
(KA640 and KA670) but while they describe the hardware for DSSI in great
detail (its very similar to SCSI btw) they both reference, but don't
include, the list of valid DSSI opcodes and their parameters!
Needless to say that makes it a bit difficult to implement. :-)
I'm looking for any documentation on the DSSI opcodes, or a reference to a
DEC EK-xxx document that documents same if you know of one. Can anyone help
out here?
On a related note, I was musing that as I attached disk and tape units I'd
call them 'dd0, dd1, ..., dt0, dt1 ...' (as in DSSI Disk 0, DSSI Tape 0,
etc) My /dev directory doesn't seem to have any devices by that name so
they would appear to be free for use, but you never know ...
--Chuck
