<recent experiences with the PDP-8. I wonder, wouldn't it make everything <so much easier if every computer in schools had a PDP-8 emulator on it, For concepts closer to the computer hardware that would eb a good thing. <and students had to learn to make simple programs in PAL before learning <concepts like the OSI 7-layer model, etc? Because, it was obvious that <the guy was being forced to avoid saying the word 'function' or <'subroutine' since people didn't know what it meant.... It's unfortunate that the course was so top heavy with out a foundation to hold it up. FYI: I have a copy of a pair of articles going back to the only MicroSystems (1983) That explains it fairly well in only a handfull of pages and then even provides a workable example wthat did not require rocket science to make useful. However the idea of data encapsulation, abstraction and arrays of data as objects are important concepts that need to be learned between adding two number on a PDP-8 in PAL and the higher level application of 5GL languages and networking. It's the side effect of knowledgeless people prescribing course goals and content. Allison