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,a9f32f7699236ef1 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,7fb761492573daee X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 10db24,a9f32f7699236ef1 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public From: spencer@ERA.COM (Spencer Allain) Subject: Re: Which first-course languages? (was: What schools use Eiffel (was: No top schools use Ada)) ? Date: 1995/04/20 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 101283211 sender: news@ERA.COM references: <3mq0jd$r10@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> followup-to: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.edu organization: Engineering Research Associates, Vienna, VA newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.edu Date: 1995-04-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article scottw@bmtech.demon.co.uk (Scott Wheeler) writes: In Article <3n35ja$6u3@theopolis.orl.mmc.com> Theodore Dennison writes: >>Miranda???? >>Languages are kind of a hobby with me, but I have NEVER heard of that >>one [Miranda]. Obscure functional language, as you know now. I had to interview someone yesterday, who's CS course had used only Miranda, Modula-2 and Oberon (Imperial College, London). I think it's an excellent idea to teach using some of these languages (I'm quite keen on Eiffel myself), but we wouldn't even have considered employing him if he hadn't learnt C under his own steam. Diverging a little from the subject, could I also put in a plea for anyone designing CS courses to include a little time (couple of days) on the underlying machine representations? Three times now, I've had CS graduates or doctors complaining that their compilers are broken, and found that they were comparing floating point numbers for equality. Scott Ok, so maybe I'm going to get flamed for this, but as a student who used Modula-2 for all the "real" projects in college, and only took C so I could learn its disgusting syntax just in case some employer wouldn't even had considered me without "C knowledge", I have to make a statement. This is not a personal attack on Scott Wheeler, I don't know him and I hold no grudge against him, I just want to point out a few things that irk me about industry. I'm hoping that the only reason for the statement but we wouldn't even have considered employing him if he hadn't learnt C under his own steam. was because the job involved real-time systems where every millisecond counts or the company didn't want to invest a couple of weeks teaching a new person the syntax of a particular language. This is where the comments about C being fundamentally different than other languages start getting flung around. I learned all I needed to about C _before_ I even took the course in it. I had taken Assembly Programming previously, and everyone knows that C was just supposed to be a "portable" assembly, and it does that pretty well, if you don't mind abusing the pre-processor. It is possible to do almost everything in Modula-2 that you can in C. I don't know the specifics of what you can't do, but they are very minimal. Of course, Modula-2 was never ported to many systems, and is probably the main reason as to why it never flew. I'm not trying to say that C is evil, just that companies that hire strictly on the basis of knowledge of C are just looking to shoot themselves in the foot. Actually, anyone who enjoys working with Eiffel, should be thankful for Modula-2 as many of the concepts came from there, not C. I'm sure that I've sown the seeds for a language war, but I hope they never grow. I don't hate C, or love Modula-2 for that matter. For different tasks, one or the other is superior, but I just despise the thought of companies that believe one language is the end-it-all and won't even consider hiring people if they don't know it. Personally, I've found that individuals who have a background in many languages (ie. different types of thinking) are generally "better" programmers. They may not be able to optimize a loop as well as a hacker who really knows one language, but they often find a way to remove the loop completely by using a different concept. I've said too much already, and I apologize to whomever actually read this far. This has little to do with comp.lang.{eiffel,ada} and barely anything to do with comp.edu (too bad I don't get comp.edu), but it had to be said. If you have any flames, please send them to me . Constructive criticism should be the only thing reposted to the net. -Spencer Allain Software Engineer Engineering Research Associates Vienna, VA 22182