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=0.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: frank@bigdog.engr.arizona.edu (Frank Manning) Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/08/31 Message-ID: <50a7cs$m6e@news.ccit.arizona.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 177694933 references: <01bb846d$c6c01780$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <4vgs4p$evl@news.accessone.com> <4vhtrd$8cq@news.ccit.arizona.edu> <5085r7$ra7@kanga.accessone.com> organization: College of Engineering and Mines, University of Arizona newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-08-31T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <5085r7$ra7@kanga.accessone.com> bokr@accessone.com (Bengt Richter) writes: [...] > I felt the value of assembler level concerns was being > evangelized to such an extent that I counter-reacted. If I had > encountered my own post out of context, emphasizing the abstract, > I would probably have felt the urge to point out that I wouldn't > want to do without a CPU/machine language view in my debugger, as > things stand now. I see your point. Personally, think Tim is going too far in evangelizing assembly language. I agree with him that students should get some exposure, but I personally would be satisfied with the bare minimum for the students to get a vague idea about what actually goes on inside the machine. Such as -- move a couple of words from memory into registers, do a math operation on the pair, then move the result back into memory. Maybe add simple I/O and a jump instruction -- just enough for them to get a hint of what's actually going on inside the magic box. I think Tim has the right idea, but teaching sorting in assembly goes a bit too far, IMHO. [...] > Should driving school students be able to fix the transmission if that > breaks during a lesson? It's a worthy subject, but out of scope. Good point. I agree that transmission repair doesn't belong in a driving school. On the other hand, I'd hope the students have at least a vague idea that transmissions usually have gears and some kind of oil or transmission fluid inside. "What am I gonna do? There's this weird red puddle in my driveway and my cousin Vinny's fiance isn't around to help!" I look at the problem from the following point of view -- in a former life I worked at a university, and one thing I did was assist professors in research or running labs in an engineering department. Engineering professors, especially older ones, tend to be rather hostile toward or intimidated by computers, especially when computers are used for data acquisition during experiments. They're worried that students won't learn anything if a computer reads a sensor. Some professors tend to think that *students* need to read thermometers, pressure gages and voltmeters themselves in order to understand physically what's going on. Otherwise the computer does everything and magically spits out an answer, and the students supposedly won't learn anything. In my humble opinion, the solution to that problem is to teach the students what actually goes on inside the computer, how a transducer signal wends its way through an ADC into the computer memory, and how to write the software that controls all that stuff. Students also need to understand that things can go wrong and the computer will tell you a direct lie if it can possibly get away with it. -- Frank Manning -- Chair, AIAA-Tucson Section