From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4b06f8f15f01a568 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,9a0ff0bffdf63657 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public From: Darren New Subject: Re: College, C, etc. Date: 1998/10/26 Message-ID: <3634DC76.57788481@fv.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 405301914 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <6skfs7$2s6$1@hirame.wwa.com> <35F252DD.5187538@earthlink.net> <6t4dge$t8u$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6t5mtp$4ho$1@news.indigo.ie> <35FFE58C.5727@ibm.net> <3600E72E.24C93C94@cl.cam.ac.uk> <6ts1q0$vo2$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <361DBC60.C153BBAD@earthlink.net> <36228EC3.4F7381FD@domain.nul> <3630b064.23189339@news.supernews.com> <3630C8DC.DF508803@fv.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: First Virtual Holdings Inc MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 12:25:20 PDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-10-26T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Frank Sergeant wrote: > > In article <3630C8DC.DF508803@fv.com>, Darren New wrote: > > > You need to understand correctness, robustness, how to interpret what > > the customer's asking for and turn it into what the customer wants > > (never the same), how to pick what language you'll use (I paid for my > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > Ph.D. by picking the right language :-), ... > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > It sounds like there might an interesting story in that. > Would you be willing to post (or email) it? Sure. The advisor in question wanted to draw pictures of communicating finite state machines Basically, he wanted to animate Estelle programs, which are formal descriptions of network protocols. The other student trying to do this was using C and XLib, and didn't really manage to get a bubble-and-arrow chart drawn after six months, let alone animating it, let alone a bunch of them connected together. For a class in "interactive programming environments", I wrote a smalltalk program in a week that would draw a state machine animating, consuming it's input string and creating it's output string. The prof was sufficiently blown away at the apparent ease that I got a research scholarship to do what the other guy couldn't get working, and of course take it much farther. Maybe it's just because I was possible a better programmer, but that certainly wasn't the only thing that made it possible to crank out something impressive and graphic in a short time. -- Darren New / Senior Software Architect / First Virtual Holdings Inc http://www.fv.com or info@fv.com -=|=- PGP Key: ftp://ftp.fv.com/pub/fv Fingerprint: 61 7D AF 9E 00 CC C2 ED / D8 4C D7 AA E4 C2 A0 73