HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dnebing@andy.bgsu.edu (dnebing)
Subject: Re: first-year programming languages
Followup-To: comp.programming
Organization: Bowling Green State University B.G., Oh.
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 18:39:31 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.161631.2334@coe.montana.edu>,
uesu03@giac1.oscs.montana.edu (Lou Glassy) wrote:
> 
> 
> Good question.  I don't have a good answer.  The process here (MSU) is
> to give the students a problem specification, from which they must develop
> a design.  Their designs are graded, and then a correct design is posted,
                                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> which the students use (or they can use their own one, if they choose) to
> implement a solution in [FORTRAN|C|Pascal] {depending on what language 
> course they're taking in conjunction with the design course.

The "correctness" of the design is often in the eye of the beholder.  I 
have seen many designs offered by instructors that were not the _best_
design
but merely one answer to the the design to be created.

> 
> !When you get a real job, most of the code you will write is going to be
> !from scratch..  Granted there is going to be times when you modify existing
> !code, but how can you create your OWN code when all you've been taught to
> !do is modify someone else's.
> 
> When you get a Real Job... I think most people will *not* be writing fresh
> code, but will spend *most* of their time adapting old code to meet new
> needs.  My small experience even here (in the academic bubble) reflects 
> this...  

As hardware development progresses, the creation of new code is inevitable.
The Macintosh is a good example.  Porting a program from any other system
to
the Mac involves a great deal of new code to generate.

That is only one example.  As computers get larger and smaller at the same
time, it will be necessary to create code to work on those newer machines.
The new code might imitate old code, but it is not necessarily the
adaptation
of the old code.

  dnebing
From: ee_d316@ceres.kingston.ac.uk (Deep Purple)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Terminal Graphics
Date: 18 Nov 1992 19:33:12 -0000
Organization: Kingston University, Kingston-upon-Thames
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: ceres.kingston.ac.uk

Hi
  Can any one tell me if it is possible to program graphics to be displayed 
(like icons) on a VT320 Terminal. If so can you send me some information or
point me in the right direction by recommeding a good book.



Thanks
Steve
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: morley@camins.camosun.bc.ca
Subject: Re: representing international languages
Organization: Camosun College
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 21:37:24 GMT

In article <By1uEB.9L1@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu>, mgmam@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Mark A. Morrell) writes:
> minard@qucis.queensu.ca (Brian Minard) writes:
>>does anyone have any pointers to literature dealing with representing
>>international languages. 
>>
>>i've read about something called "Unicode", but can't remember where i saw it 
>>(and am not sure if that is the correct spelling of it, in any event).  
>>
>>any information would be appreciated.
>>
>>thanks.
>>
>>brian
> 
> No pointers, but Unicode (and I think you've got that right) is just
> somebodys brain child for a new character set which would include all
> the characters of all the different alphabets.  I think they intend for
> it to be 16-bit.  They haven't gotten to the point with it where anybody
> could use it yet...
> -- 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Mark A. Morrell     Disclaimer:  _I_ probably don't even believe it.
> Literary Reference:  The introduction to Cervantes' Don Quixote.

Yes, UNICODE is a 16 bit character set that is supposed to be able to represent
all characters in all alphabets of all languages, plus various other characters
and symbols.  Windows NT has support for programming with UNICODE and/or the
normal ASCII character sets.

MARK
morley@camins.camosun.bc.ca
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: Need a text manipulation tool / programming language.
From: bamon@ocvaxc.cc.oberlin.edu
Date: 23 Nov 92 16:52:46 EDT
Organization: Oberlin College

 In article <1992Nov21.235606.1497@leland.Stanford.EDU> felciano@summit.stanford.edu (Ramon M. Felciano) writes:
>
>Hi --
>
>I'm looking for a tool or programming language designed for the
>manipulation of text files. I've got a number of similarly formatted
>files that I want parsed into my program. Before I can do that,
>however, I need to "massage" these files into the same format. I tried
>writting a tool to do this, but the result starting looking more and
>more like a language syntax parser (aagh!)
>
>Are there any tools (Mac, Unix, or other) that do something like this?
>I guess I'm sort of looking for a glorified grep with language
>constructs (e.g. if-thens).
>
>Thanks!
>
>Ramon
>

There is a whole language devoted to text manipulation. It's called
Snobol. It's GREAT for large jobs. I've used it to create hundreds
of pages of vendor catalogues from huge magtape files. It's also
great for not so large, but very complex jobs. It is a really
easy to use and easy to modify language, but there is a little bit
of a learning curve. It's available as Spitbol for the VAX/VMS, and
there is a PC version as well. It allows complex pattern matching,
and branching on the basis of the success or failure of any match.

If you want to know more, email me.

Jennifer
bamon@ocvaxc.cc.oberlin.edu

Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: dzouak@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (Driss Zouak)
Subject: Re: first-year programming languages
Summary: A student's view
Organization: University of Waterloo
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 02:46:00 GMT

   I'm presently an engineering student, but next semester will be in
math computer science.  I have done programming for a long time as a hobby
and have taken several courses at CEGEP (Quebec's grade 12 and 13 substitute)
       
    I am actually looking forward to taking courses in assembler and the like.
I have already taken one in Fortran 77 (among others).  I feel that, at least
for me, it gave me a better understanding as well as made me have to be
a more flexible programmer.

   From my personal point of view, I feel that David Nebinger's point on
it making or breaker the students has a good point.  You need to be able
to find those that are computer scientists, not just programmers.  For me
there is a large difference between those two terms.

  I hope that I've added some constructive input.

Driss Zouak
dzouak@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca
or
dzouak@1308.uwaterloo.ca 
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: dnl@convex.is.macsch.com (David Lombard)
Subject: Re: first-year programming languages
Organization: MacNeal-Schwendler Corp.
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 20:51:28 GMT

In article <92320.183138BJ020000@NDSUVM1.BITNET> Dave Mueller <BJ020000@NDSUVM1.BITNET> writes:
>
>I don't believe this is a very good way to teach.  It doesn't promote
>any origanility (sp) and creativity..  How can you learn how to program by
>yourself if all you do is change a few lines of code?
>
>When you get a real job, most of the code you will write is going to be
>from scratch..  Granted there is going to be times when you modify existing
>code, but how can you create your OWN code when all you've been taught to
>do is modify someone else's.
>

I *disagree* with your concept of a *real job*.  The first thing most
employers do is start a new grad of code maintenance.  This does three things,
one it (hopefully) teaches the new grad the company's concept of proper
coding style. (Most code I`ve seen from BS & MS grads who have not worked
is _poor_!).  Next, the new grad can come up to speed and take on
responsibilities as they prove themeselves.  The final thing it does is 
to provide the supervisor with the opportunity to see the quality of 
work the person can produce (i.e. problem solving, creativeness, etc).

I shudder to think of turning a new grad loose without any assurances
that the are competant and able to work independently.

Regards,
DNL

                 MY_COMMENTS = MY_OPINIONS = NOBODY_ELSES;

David N. Lombard    The first thing we do,         The MacNeal-Schwendler Corp
dnl@macsch.com      Let's kill all the lawyers.    815 Colorado Blvd
(213) 259-4911      II Henry VI, IV.ii             Los Angeles, CA  90041
From: toddpw@cco.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: Modulo n arithmetics
Date: 17 Nov 1992 11:17:53 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandman.caltech.edu
Keywords: arithmetic

wendt@CS.ColoState.EDU (alan l wendt) writes:

>If the algorithm maintains the queue head pointer and the queue length,
>instead of head and tail, the two cases can be disambiguated easily!

Sorry if this is nitpicking, but if your length ranges from 0..2^N and you
want to store the length in a bitfield or packed subrange for some reason,
you need to be careful. Thankfully, this is not much of a problem anymore
(except on 8 bit embedded systems and such), but it is easy to solve:

>Horowitz & Sahni (Fundamentals of Computer Algorithms) suggest that one
>might maintain an additional boolean to disambiguate the two situations,

If you use _two_ booleans, you get mutual exclusion for free. It's been
a while since I worked it out though, so I'd have to dig up my notes to
remember the whole algorithm. I do remember that it is fairly symmetric.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ cco.caltech.edu
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: uesu03@giac1.oscs.montana.edu (Lou Glassy)
Subject: Re: first-year programming languages
Keywords: n
Organization: Montana State University, Bozeman  MT
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 16:16:31 GMT

[much deleted]

!(Sorry I lost the originator of this paragraph)..
!
!I'm curious as to what other people think about this..  99% of the programs
!my CS teacher gave to me were like what the above paragraph is describing..
!All we had to do was take a program, either given in the book or in class,
!and make a few changes..  That was the assignment.
!
!I don't believe this is a very good way to teach.  It doesn't promote
!any origanility (sp) and creativity..  How can you learn how to program by
!yourself if all you do is change a few lines of code?

Good question.  I don't have a good answer.  The process here (MSU) is
to give the students a problem specification, from which they must develop
a design.  Their designs are graded, and then a correct design is posted,
which the students use (or they can use their own one, if they choose) to
implement a solution in [FORTRAN|C|Pascal] {depending on what language 
course they're taking in conjunction with the design course.

!When you get a real job, most of the code you will write is going to be
!from scratch..  Granted there is going to be times when you modify existing
!code, but how can you create your OWN code when all you've been taught to
!do is modify someone else's.

When you get a Real Job... I think most people will *not* be writing fresh
code, but will spend *most* of their time adapting old code to meet new
needs.  My small experience even here (in the academic bubble) reflects 
this...  

!I tutor the programming languages they teach here, and I can really tell that
!most of this teacher's student's are not good programmers at all.  They don't
!have even basic concepts such as modules (Modula-2 type) and ATD's.  To me,
!it is really frustrating to see this happening.  I transferred here from a
!school that made us write totally original programs, and I think that's the
!best way to go.

I understand and share your frustration.  The curriculum here was skewed in
the direction you describe above.  Happily, it's changing, and I think the
students coming out nowadays have a stronger grasp of the essential software
engineering issues.  

!Any comments?

Just one more:  the dichotomy between computer scientists and programmers
is not likely to go away.  In the best of all worlds, both of these
elements would be stressed in equal measure (IMHO).

!Dave Mueller
!bj020000@vm1.nodak.edu

Lou.

-- 
Lou Glassy (uesu03@giac1.oscs.montana.edu)   Watch the field behind the plow
Earth Sciences Department                    Turn to straight, dark rows
Montana State University                     Put another season's promise
Bozeman, Montana 59715 USA                   In the ground...  --Stan Rogers
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: dkeisen@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dave Eisen)
Subject: Re: first-year programming languages
Keywords: n
Organization: Sequoia Peripherals, Inc.
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 17:15:43 GMT

!When you get a real job, most of the code you will write is going to be
!from scratch..  Granted there is going to be times when you modify existing
!code, but how can you create your OWN code when all you've been taught to
!do is modify someone else's.

I've never tought a CS class nor taken one, so I really shouldn't
be sticking my nose into a discussion about computer science
education.

But this feels wrong. Really wrong.

The main problem I have with inexperienced programmers is that
they write *everything* from scratch. They are not good at
reusing existing code, especially if the existing code is not
as clean as it should be. And they are even worse at producing
code that can be reused. Too many years of toy projects in school.

Is there really a problem with students not getting enough of
a chance to write programs from scratch? Is the state of teaching
so bad that students are only asked to make trivial changes to
existing code?

Maybe I should go back to hiring math majors...



-- 
Dave Eisen                               Sequoia Peripherals: (415) 967-5644
dkeisen@leland.Stanford.EDU              Home:                (415) 321-5154
       There's something in my library to offend everybody. 
          --- Washington Coalition Against Censorship
From: bromley@think.com (Mark Bromley)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: first-year programming languages
Date: 20 Nov 1992 15:33:06 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: luna.think.com

In article <1992Nov19.000628.18932@linus.mitre.org> crawford@boole.mitre.org (Randy Crawford) writes:
>I'm not so ready to predict that computers in 2020 will so closely resemble
>today's crop of assembly machines.  After all, hasn't assembly programming
>pretty much disappeared from most software development in the past decade?
>Ever try to outguess optimizing compilers on architectures like SPARC or 
>PA-RISC?  Think you could better their scheduling/pipelining/register-window 
>use by programming in assembly?  If so, you're a far better assembly programmer 
>than I. 

I wouldn't say that assembly has disappeared in the last decade.  It is
rare to find large programes totally implemented in assembler, but some
speed critical sections of code are still implemented in assembler.
Scheduling, pipelining, caches etc are not mysterious.  Given any
reasonably short sequence of code, say on the order of a page, I would
expect humans to be better than compilers when they are willing to expend
the effort.

From first hand experience I can tell you that the SPARC compilers are not
exactly omniscient.

Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: mgmam@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Mark A. Morrell)
Subject: Re: representing international languages
Keywords: international languages, representation
Organization: Educational Computing Network
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 04:42:10 GMT

minard@qucis.queensu.ca (Brian Minard) writes:
>does anyone have any pointers to literature dealing with representing
>international languages. 
>
>i've read about something called "Unicode", but can't remember where i saw it 
>(and am not sure if that is the correct spelling of it, in any event).  
>
>any information would be appreciated.
>
>thanks.
>
>brian

No pointers, but Unicode (and I think you've got that right) is just
somebodys brain child for a new character set which would include all
the characters of all the different alphabets.  I think they intend for
it to be 16-bit.  They haven't gotten to the point with it where anybody
could use it yet...
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark A. Morrell     Disclaimer:  _I_ probably don't even believe it.
Literary Reference:  The introduction to Cervantes' Don Quixote.

Xref: sparky comp.programming:3165 comp.unix.programmer:5307
From: alan@frey.newcastle.edu.au (Alan Hargreaves)
Newsgroups: comp.programming,comp.unix.programmer
Subject: Re: UUENCODE Format?
Date: 17 Nov 1992 10:37:52 +1100
Organization: Maths Department, University of Newcastle, Oz.
Distribution: world,local
NNTP-Posting-Host: frey.newcastle.edu.au

omf@tiamat.hacks.arizona.edu (Oscar Fowler) writes:

>SOMEWHERE there must be an 'official' document describing the format
>of a UUENCODEd file.  For example, what does the number after
>the BEGIN signify?  I've looked through ARCHIE, but only found

the number after the name is the mode of the file for chmod. The file
has it's attributes set to this when created.

alan.
-- 
Alan Hargreaves (VK2KVF) alan@frey.newcastle.edu.au, Uni of Newcastle, UCS.
Ph: +61 49 215 512 Fax: +61 49 684 742 ICBM: 32 53 44.6 S / 151 41 52.6 E

Software Bloat -  Any UNIX(tm) after Version 7.	(Sm@cerberus.bhpese.oz.au)
From: pmcauley@maths.tcd.ie (Paul Mc Auley)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Curves and Tangents thereof
Date: 16 Nov 92 22:54:26 GMT
Organization: Maths R Us

Ok. Sorry if this is a faq but does anybody know of a standard/efficient way
of representing a set of curves and then given a point, to find a tangent to
one or more of those curves intersecting the point? In the simplest cases it
would be fairly trivial to do this by hand, but I want to be able to set up
an algorithm to do so. Please mail me and I'll post a summary.
	Thanks,
		Paul Mc Auley.
-- 
__________________________.
Paul Mc Auley             |   God is real . . . . . .
--------------------------|
AKA pmcauley@maths.tcd.ie |        . . . . . . . . Unless Declared an Integer.
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: gdb27019@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Gregory D. Bolsinga)
Subject: C pointers
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 02:30:50 GMT

Could anyone help me?  I am writing a program which requires the use of 
plenty of pointers, and they are getting a little twisted.  I have heard of
a great help program called 'cdecl', I believe.  You type in the statement,
and the program tells you in English what it means, or you can do it in 
reverse.  If anyone knows, and it is an ftp site, could you also tell me
how to access a ftp site, I've never done it before? Thanks for your help
in advance. 

P.S. Please mail me at gbolsing@magritte.ncsa.uiuc.edu NOT the address
above, since I don't use it often. Thanks.

Greg Bolsinga

Xref: sparky comp.programming:3184 comp.unix.programmer:5344 comp.unix.misc:4246 rec.games.corewar:1490 rec.games.programmer:4742 comp.org.ieee:556 comp.org.usenix:1034 comp.lang.c:16765 comp.lang.c++:16543 comp.software-eng:4388
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: first-year programming languages
From: Dave Mueller <BJ020000@NDSUVM1.BITNET>
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 18:31:38 CST
 ple.com><1992Nov13.171915.26423@cbnewsc.cb.att.com><aelman.721693402@Xenon.Stanford.EDU> <dnebing-141192140340@m64-143.bgsu.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computer Network

>  What happens in the first two classes?  The first two classes use
>Pascal.  The programming assignments are meant to teach the language
>more than the concepts.  When necessary, the students are practically
>given the basic code which they only have to modify for their own
>programs.

(Sorry I lost the originator of this paragraph)..

I'm curious as to what other people think about this..  99% of the programs
my CS teacher gave to me were like what the above paragraph is describing..
All we had to do was take a program, either given in the book or in class,
and make a few changes..  That was the assignment.

I don't believe this is a very good way to teach.  It doesn't promote
any origanility (sp) and creativity..  How can you learn how to program by
yourself if all you do is change a few lines of code?

When you get a real job, most of the code you will write is going to be
from scratch..  Granted there is going to be times when you modify existing
code, but how can you create your OWN code when all you've been taught to
do is modify someone else's.

I tutor the programming languages they teach here, and I can really tell that
most of this teacher's student's are not good programmers at all.  They don't
have even basic concepts such as modules (Modula-2 type) and ATD's.  To me,
it is really frustrating to see this happening.  I transferred here from a
school that made us write totally original programs, and I think that's the
best way to go.

Any comments?

Dave Mueller
bj020000@vm1.nodak.edu
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: jarmo@ksvltd.fi (Jarmo Raiha)
Subject: Re: Parsing mathematical functions.
Organization: KSV Instruments ltd. Helsinki,Finland
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 05:21:43 GMT

dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann) writes:


>IMHO, the first thing you should do is give up on standard expression format,
>unless knowledge of parsing techniques (like recursive descent) is common
>among your students.

On the other hand, if you say that the function should be written in some
programming language syntax, the whole problem collapses to a trivial one.
The obvious solution then is to copy that line into a program template,
compile it, and finally execute it.

Jarmo Raiha
From: greent@ncs.dnd.ca (Tim Green)
Subject: Re: Need a text manipulation tool / programming language.
Organization: DND, Ottawa, CANADA
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 10:29:24 GMT

In article <1992Nov21.235606.1497@leland.Stanford.EDU> felciano@summit.stanford.edu (Ramon M. Felciano) writes:
>
>I'm looking for a tool or programming language designed for the
>manipulation of text files. I've got a number of similarly formatted
>files that I want parsed into my program. Before I can do that,
>however, I need to "massage" these files into the same format. I tried
>writting a tool to do this, but the result starting looking more and
>more like a language syntax parser (aagh!)
>
>Are there any tools (Mac, Unix, or other) that do something like this?
>I guess I'm sort of looking for a glorified grep with language
>constructs (e.g. if-thens).
>

Use "awk".  This is a standard utility on most Unix systems and there
are version available for MS-DOS at least.
						--TCG (:


Newsgroups: comp.programming,comp.unix.programmer
From: hughm@brwah.inmos.co.uk (Hugh McIntyre)
Subject: Re: UUENCODE Format?
Organization: INMOS Limited, Bristol, UK
Distribution: world,local
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 11:27:22 GMT

In article <1e9bcgINNqcl@frey.newcastle.edu.au>, alan@frey.newcastle.edu.au (Alan Hargreaves) writes:
|> omf@tiamat.hacks.arizona.edu (Oscar Fowler) writes:
|> 
|> >SOMEWHERE there must be an 'official' document describing the format
|> >of a UUENCODEd file.  For example, what does the number after

Try:

man 5 uuencode

:-).  This describes the whole format in gory detail.

Hugh McIntyre
INMOS, Bristol, UK.
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: phardie@nastar.uucp (Pete Hardie)
Subject: Re: first-year programming languages
Organization: Digital Transmission Systems, Duluth, GA.
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 17:48:47 GMT


When I started CS classes at University of Florida, the COrequisite classes
were Intro to Computer Architecture (assembler) and Intro to Computer Software
(Pascal).  It made for a rough semester, but it did manage to make me aware
of both the high and low ends of the software game.

IMHO, the first class being a high-level language (Pascal) is good, since most
people entering have had some experience like BASIC, and need a good dose of
strong structured programming to get them on the right track.  Then some
assembler and/or C classes.

-- 
Pete Hardie:  phardie@nastar  (voice) (404) 497-0101
Digital Transmission Systems, Inc., Duluth GA
Member, DTS Dart Team           |  cat * | egrep -v "signature virus|infection" 
Position:  Goalie               |
Newsgroups: comp.programming,sci.physics,sci.math