Re: Academic CS Losers?

[pfanous@crl.com (Phillip Fanous)]

: (Since everyone laughs at making new languages or user interfaces
: based on parsing, why should Compilers be a required course?

For me, it was one of the more enlightening courses in my CS program.  The
book was pathetic, but the instructor was quite effective. Also, the main
portion of the grade was based upon the implementation of a "baby C"
compiler. For one thing, I gained a much deeper understanding of the C
language (understanding the recursive nature of compiler functionality
actually made looking at what I once thought was an obscure program not so
obscure.)

:    181   Formal languages and Automata Theory (Kill)  

I agree. That class is completely useless. 


: physics. We don't need to do combinatorial logic maps etc.  We do not
: really need to understand the details of hardware or worry about
: "micro-coding" which is obsolete. Assembly coverage also should be
: light. Instead we need to look at an architecture from a higher
: level.  "Arch I" should cover something like Tanenbaum Structured
: Computer Org and "Arch II" should cover Patterson and Hennessy (now
: used at graduate level).  We sure don't need software people
: doing "Radio Shack" projects in a lab. Networks is probably too
: specific a topic to force at the undergrad level).

I know this is probably geared more toward comp eng but what about 
embedded systems programming? It can't be that bad giving SW people an 
intro into the field of microprocessor HW/SW design. Granted, This field 
also requires a detailed understanding of electric circuits.




: My opinion that lower division programming language should be done in
: a done in a strongly typed imperitive object oriented language which
: is very disiplined.   Examples: Ada9x, Modula3, Oberon2.  More
: crackpot functional (Scheme/Lisp) and declaritive languages (Prolog)
: would be covered in later programming languages classes.  I am not
: impressed with my department's current choices in programming
: languages.

I agree. This would make learning C++ much easier and would help the 
novice programmer in adopting the object-oriented design paradigm early 
so that they can develop good design habits.