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, MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c7ec20d43aed6e2c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: Newbie in distress :-) Date: 1999/10/24 Message-ID: <7utnh6$gjs$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 539758287 References: <7urnh6$4ov$1@news2.inter.net.il> <7usf0h$du2$1@ash.prod.itd.earthlink.net> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x28.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Sun Oct 24 01:31:18 1999 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-10-24T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article , Ehud Lamm wrote: > The topic is of course also included in the text book. I fear students are unlearning the technique of reading books, in favor of throwing a quick question to some newsgroup in the hopes of finding an answer. The problem of course is that this does not scale well. It is not nearly so productive to send a message to the newsgroup that says: "I have to write some Ada code for designing nuclear fusion reactors, and I am pretty much a newbie when it comes to nuclear fusion. I wondered if anyone could give me some quick pointers, or some code that I could adapt. Thanks a million." :-) One of the things we need to teach our students is how to read (and learn from the reading of) reference materials of various levels of sophistication. My final exam in my yearly honors assembly language and processor architecture course tries to get at this issue. These are second year students, and the exam is open book two hours. I give them a reference manual for a completely new machine that I designed, a small machine, but not necessarily a simple one (last year, the machine was a small EPIC machine). They have to read the reference manual, which gives the instruction set and the ABI for the machine, and then write some simple programs and answer questions about programs for the machine, and answer some general questions about the strong and weak points of the particular architecture. I tell them, spend the first half hour reading, don't put pen to paper till 30 minutes is up :-) Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.