"Nobody programs in machine language" (was: Modern

It was thus said that the Great Tony Duell once stated: I think it should be too (and I'm the author of the statement you quoted). I remember complaining to a friend of mine (who worked as an admin in the Comp Sci department of my college) about the direction the courses were going (among other things, handing in source code in MS-WORD format). She (and yes, it was a she 8-) said that it was a regular occurence for students to visit the Dean and complain about classes either being too hard or not relevent to their future employment prospects. So of course the courses got easier and drifted more towards a Microsoft-centered view on things. Glad I was no longer there for this. But most "universities" are but self-important trade schools. Comp Sci seems to be the one subject that is tought backwards---that is, with the latest and greatest instead of having the student work their way through simpler concepts first (which follow historical progress, oddly enough 8-) So yes, students should be first introduced to simple computers that can be easily understood and only programmed in machine language, then assembly and then slightly higher level languages. I'm also firmly believe that programmers should write a structured program in an unstructured langauge, and an object oriented program in a non-OOP language, and so on. That way, the student can at least appreciate what each paradigm brings to programming. That, and having to maintain previously written student programs but that's getting dangerously close to practicality and not enough ivory tower flimflamery. At the very least, the truth that Lisp isn't a high level language at all (it's not---to get even a hope of a useful program out of it, you need to understand the underlying implementation and why (eq 2 2) is not always true, but I digress 8-P -spc (Quick question: what was first? Lisp or FORTRAN?)