7 May
2010
7 May
'10
3:45 p.m.
> I taught beginning FORTRAN in the 1980s at
Merritt College (community
> college), and would not mind doing it again, if we could get a quorum
> for the classes. COBOL is gone from our curriculum :-( RPG is gone
> from our curriculum :-) FORTRAN is gone from our curriculum :-( APL is
> gone from our curriculum :-( BASIC is gone from our curriculum :-( The
> administration has cancelled C The administration has cancelled C# The
> administration has cancelled ASM We are down to "Using Microsoft
> Office", "VISUAL BASIC", and C++ (slated for cancellation soon)
On Fri, 7 May 2010, Chuck Guzis wrote:
I wonder if it's possible to find a copy of
Valtrep for the IBM 709.
FORTRAN was on the 704. (1954)
Was Valtrep on the 701??
BTW, the 704, 709 had 38 bit accumulator and 36 bit quotient. So, back in
the "good old days" we had "38 bit computers" :-)
I think it was all downhill after PL/I.
Ahhhhhh.
Different languages have different characteristics.
I believe that BASIC is the best language for a student's very first
exposure to computers ("Get the computer to put your name on the screen"
with very little frustration.)
PASCAL was good for building discipline and self-control.
C was great AFTER a student had develope self-control and discipline.
Therefore, what sequence do you think the educational institutions follow?
"What sequence do you think the educational institutions follow?", NOT
"What sequence do you think the educational institutions SHOULD follow?"
But most of us came in through other paths. "How can anybody claim to
know anything about computers when they haven't been working in machine
language?" "COBOL is the heart of Data Processing" "Nothing
compares
with APL for doing your calculations"
Dijkstra:
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense.
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the
future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new
generation of coding bums.
FORTRAN, 'the infantile disorder', by now nearly 20 years old, is
hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind
today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to
be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's
programs, bugs included.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that
have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com