HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 01:51:03 GMT

In article <1992Aug31.133811.3626@crd.ge.com>, davidsen@ariel.crd.GE.COM (william E Davidsen) writes:
|> [.....]
|>   The problem as I see it is that too many scientists and engineers
|> think that because they can write working code they don't need (or are)
|> programmers. Most people can learn to play the paino, but would agree
|> that they are not professional quality, even the "background music in a
|> piano bar" professional quality. Yet they think that programming
|> somehow requires less training, practice, and dare I say it, *talent*
|> than music.
|> 
|>   No optimizer will ever replace using the right algorithm to solve the
|> problem, no programming tool will ever generate meaningful names, no
|> automated indenter or pretty-printer will ever generate useful comments
|> or truly readable code. To do this even competently is a skill which
|> conspicuously eludes most people who don't write code for a living, and

Unfortunately, it also conspicuously eludes most people who *do* write code for
a living. I've seen people with extensive formal training in CS write code
which, although elegant in concept, is quite horrendous in implementation. I've
also seen professional programmers write code which although efficient in
execution is also impossible for anyone else to decipher. Being able to make
the appropriate design tradeoffs is something very few people can do and
something almost noone can do on the first design iteration. Problem is,
because of deadline pressure, once a program works, the next overall design
iteration will not happen for a long time if at all.  

|> to do this with consumate skill requires training, practice, and a
|> natural talent given to only a few people. 

True enough.

Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch,sci.math
From: ceblair@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Charles Blair)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 13:43:09 GMT

zweben@linguine.cis.ohio-state.edu (Stu Zweben) writes:

>This is one of the main reasons that the Computing Sciences Accreditation
>Board was formed by ACM and IEEE-CS in the mid-80s.  Programs that are
>accredited through CSAB must require 2/5 of a year of science (four courses,
>including the equivalent of a two-semester sequence in a lab science for
>science majors, and ...

   I do not see why somebody intending to programming work, even in a real
world setting, needs two semesters of lab science.
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch,sci.math
From: epeterso@fenix.encore.com (Eric Peterson)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: Encore Computer Corporation
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 15:16:13 GMT
Followup-To: comp.edu

In article <BtwJGC.1F1@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> ceblair@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Charles Blair) writes:
>zweben@linguine.cis.ohio-state.edu (Stu Zweben) writes:
>
>>This is one of the main reasons that the Computing Sciences Accreditation
>>Board was formed by ACM and IEEE-CS in the mid-80s.  Programs that are
>>accredited through CSAB must require 2/5 of a year of science (four courses,
>>including the equivalent of a two-semester sequence in a lab science for
>>science majors, and ...
>
>   I do not see why somebody intending to programming work, even in a real
>world setting, needs two semesters of lab science.

Because most of what your average programmer does during the course of
development (software engineering principles aside) is experimentation.
You formulate and test hypotheses about what is going on inside of a
complex hardware/software system all the time.  You have to be able to
interact with the real world when theory breaks down (ie, "The man page
[or standard] says it should do this, but it doesn't!  Why?!").

Eric
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch,sci.math
From: martin@sec.dom.uab.edu (Martin K. Jones)
Subject: Re: MIX Simulator?  (Was: Scientists as Programmers
Reply-To: martin@sec.dom.uab.edu (Martin K. Jones)
Organization: University of Alabama at Birmingham
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 14:04:37 GMT


In article <ARA.92Sep3010852@camelot.ai.mit.edu>, ara@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Allan Adler) writes:
|>I would be interested in having a simulator for his mythical MIX machine
|>and don't have time or energy to write one myself. Does anyone know
|>where one can ftp one? I think availability of such a simulator would
|>be a useful aid to reading his book, even if it seems contrary to the
|>spirit of the book to have a real machine to work with. The exercises
|>do involve writing in MIX and why not have a tool for working with it?
|>
When I took a data structures course 12 years ago we used a MIX simulator
that ran on a Honeywell/Xerox 560 mainframe. It was written in assembly, unfortunately.

				Martin K. Jones
	   			University of Alabama at Birmingham
	   			MARTIN@ARU.DOM.UAB.EDU

 
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,sci.general,sci.math
From: fjh@cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 16:36:17 GMT

steve@hubcap.clemson.edu ("Steve" Stevenson) writes:

>jsvrc@rc.rit.edu (Doctor FORTRAN) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Aug25.154501.8654@colorado.edu> ejh@khonshu.colorado.edu (Edward J. Hartnett) writes:
>
>>Nevertheless, you do have a point. Software specialists will argue about the
>>best data structure to use for a problem, and still be trying to dope it out
>>while the scientist has the whole thing already coded. That's because the
>>scientist will see the program as what it truly is: a means to an end, rather
>>than as an end unto itself. If computing is an end unto itself, it cannot
>>be of practical consequence. (Didn't Hamming like to say that the purpose of
>>computing was insight, not numbers?)
>
>Yes, Hamming wrote this in the frontespiece of the first edition of his
>{\em Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers}.
>
>> But I must disagree when you characterize
>>scientists as bad programmers. That's bigotry, and a stereotype to which I
>>must strenuously object.
>
>I'm in the language biz and I accept your criticism...CSers seem to think that
>programs are an end in themselves. There are lots of underground anecdotes
>about scientists who learn that the problem they're computationally trying
>to solve has an analytic solution---they immediately trash the program.
>At the recent SHPCC conference we had a session on education and computational
>science. One of the computer science types got himself into trouble by having
>the program-is-everything view.

Equally, I think that the characterization of "software specialists" or
"computer scientists" as viewing the software as an end unto itself is
bigotry, and a stereotype to which I must strenously object.

Indeed I think it would be far more fair to say that "scientists are generally
less skilled at programming than professional programmers" than to say that
"professional programmers think that programs are the only things of
importance in this universe".

--
Fergus Henderson             fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU      
For the humor impaired, insert a smiley every three words.
This .signature VIRUS is a self-referential statement that is true - but 
you will only be able to consistently believe it if you copy it to your own
.signature file!
-- 
Fergus Henderson             fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU      
This .signature VIRUS is a self-referential statement that is true - but 
you will only be able to consistently believe it if you copy it to your own
.signature file!
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran
From: meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: Open Software Foundation
	<1992Aug27.154823.583@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>
	<1992Aug31.133811.3626@crd.ge.com> <25910@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
	<92245.124125KGZXK@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 00:28:50 GMT

In article <92245.124125KGZXK@ASUACAD.BITNET> Zafer KADI
<KGZXK@ASUACAD.BITNET> writes:

| I have been on both sides of issue (I have MS's in both Mech.Eng CS)
| 
| There is no one wrong or right on the issue of :
| 
| 1. FORTRAN or anyother language.
|    All you Computer Science major that think Fortran is so bad    can
| you tell me anyother language that has all the forms of numbers
| that the scinetist use such as integers, real numbers and COMPLEX
| numbers.

C++.

| Issue # 2:
| 
| About having global variables or not and if making calls slows the
| program and optimization:  Yes it does.
| 
| About the MIPS compiler :
|  This compiler is not faultless :
|   Example : Has a problem with complex numbers in FORTRAN when the
|             -r8  option is used (does not promote them, even though
|             it should.  If you have a DEC or an SGI they use the
|    MIPS compiler
| 
|    To have the optimization of the nature that the previous person
| mentioned about the compiler is to compiler everything together.
| That will break the consept of modularity and the need to develop
| each part of the program as a subrotuine or function, since at
| the end you can insert it.   There are switches as I remember for that compiler
|  to insert code.

I'm not familar with the fortran compiler, but in general the MIPS
compilers only needs to 'compile everything together' at the highest
level of optimization.  Even then you specify multiple sources to the
compilation line, and also there is an option to generate the u-code,
so that it can do the global optimization at the final step.  Also,
I've never seen that many real world modular fortran programs.

| As you see no one will win on this.  Do you want the program to be faster or
| clearly written for your own standards.....

Not an issue.

|  Issue # 5
| I totally agree that CS majors do not have enough knowledge
| in mathematics and physics and if you are taking classes
| in Computer Graphics or Computer Aidded Design  all you CS major that
| thing that programming is everything in your job or knowing how
| the computer works will realize it isn't so.
| The above opinion is not only mine but most of the  profs in
| the CS dept. at ASU, mostly Comp. Graph. and CAGD.

IMHO, I think that for most programmers, the higher levels of math are
superflorious.  Most people in the profession don't ever use the math
they learn.  Granted some do, for example people doing scientific
codes that started the thread, but bear in mind that is a small
minority of people doing programming.  Note, I'm not advocating
eliminating the math courses....
--
Michael Meissner	email: meissner@osf.org		phone: 617-621-8861
Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA, 02142

You are in a twisty little passage of standards, all conflicting.
Newsgroups: comp.edu
From: fineberg@win31.nas.nasa.gov (Samuel A. Fineberg)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: CSC, NASA Ames Research Center, NAS Division
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 16:42:22 GMT
Reply-To: fineberg@nas.nasa.gov

In article <1992Sep1.055922.17969@lut.ac.uk>, J.P.Knight@lut.ac.uk writes:
|> In article <1992Aug31.204426.1985@craycos.com> sog@craycos.com (Steve Gombosi) writes:
|> >
|> >Having recently encountered honors graduates in "Computer Science" who were
|> >not entirely sure exactly what an assembler is makes me despair of finding
|> >BSc-s who understand vector processing. Perhaps things are better in
|> >Canada...
|> >
|> 
|> Having graduated with a degree in CS just over a year ago, and after
|> having spent a few hours during my first year of PhD study lecturing to
|> other CS Students (both straight BSc CS types and MSc conversions), I
|> heartily concur on this.  In our department, much of the ongoing
|> research is centred around two major topics; HCI and Formal Methods.  I
|> know people who've come out of the place with pretty reasonable results
|> who still find Operating Systems a mystery and for whom assemblers and
|> CPU understanding doesn't really stretch past the simplified VAX code
|> and Z80 we were presented in our first year.
This reminds me of an argument I once had with a CS student that was trying to
convince me that there were some things that you could do in LISP that were
impossible to do in C or assembler.  

Sam

P.S., I do realize that some things are harder in some languages, but I have
met quite a few CS students that forgot that computers work with 1's and 0's.
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran
From: mschaeff@pilot.njin.net (Marc Schaeffer)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: THANKS!
Date: 31 Aug 92 15:57:51 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


Thanks to all of you who responded to my inquiry regarding the use of
IBM mainframe in undergraduate Computer science curriculum.  The
responses were most helpful.  Thanks again!
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc
From: lezz@merlin.dev.cdx.mot.com (Lezz Giles)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Reply-To: lezz@merlin.dev.cdx.mot.com (Lezz Giles)
Organization: Motorola Codex, Canton, MA
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 20:42:55 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.085256@trc.amoco.com>, zkdc05@trc.amoco.com (Kelly D. Crawford) writes:
|>In article <9224622.17597@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>, fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus James HENDERSON) writes:
|>> meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) writes:
|>> 
|>> >In article <92245.124125KGZXK@ASUACAD.BITNET> Zafer KADI
|>> ><KGZXK@ASUACAD.BITNET> writes:
|>> >
|>> >| I have been on both sides of issue (I have MS's in both Mech.Eng CS)
|>> >| 
|>> >| There is no one wrong or right on the issue of :
|>> >| 
|>> >| 1. FORTRAN or anyother language.
|>> >|    All you Computer Science major that think Fortran is so bad    can
|>> >| you tell me anyother language that has all the forms of numbers
|>> >| that the scinetist use such as integers, real numbers and COMPLEX
|>> >| numbers.
|>> >
|>> >C++.
|>> 
|>> Exactly. What's more, with C++ I can have arbitrary precision integers,
|>> arbitrary precision rational numbers, fixed point real numbers, etc.
|>> (all of these are available using GNU's libg++). If you want
|>> quaternions, then it's no big deal to add them too.
|>> 
|>> Of course there is no single language that will please everybody, but IMHO
|>> teaching new CS students Fortran is not making the best use of the
|>> limited course time available.
|>>
|>
|>With trillions of lines of existing Fortran in the scientific marketplace, it is a
|>travesty not to teach CS students Fortran sometime during their education.
|>I'm not trying to argue language merits here, but just pointing out that I
|>know many CS majors that have no clue about Fortran ("Oh, I've heard lots
|>of bad things about it.") and are lost when it comes to having to work with
|>existing code.  Perhaps not an entire class, but they need to have some basic
|>familiarity with it, just because of the high likelihood that they will run into it
|>sometime during their career.

But if their CS course was any good at all then they should be able to
pick up any new language - particularly a procedural language like Fortran -
in a very short time.  I didn't learn any C at university, but when it came
to my first job I taught myself the basics of C by simply reading the appendix
to K&R 1.  I firmly believe that I could learn the basics of Fortran in about
an afternoon, if not in less time.  I wouldn't become a Fortran hacker in that
time but I would become a competent Fortran programmer, simply because I am
already a competent C/Pascal/Perl/Algol/Imp/shell/etc. etc. programmer.
Remember the saying "Teach a man Fortran and he'll program today, but teach him
programming and he'll program forever" :-)

Of course, if their CS course wasn't any good then that explains your complaint :-(

Lezz Giles
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran
From: shenkin@avogadro.barnard.columbia.edu (Peter S. Shenkin)
Subject: Re: Small Language Wanted
Organization: Dept. of Chem, Barnard College, Columbia U, New York
Distribution: na
Keywords: modular programming
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 20:05:52 GMT
X-Posted-From: avogadro.barnard.columbia.edu
X-Posted-Through: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

In article <1992Aug28.161000.6930@newshost.lanl.gov> jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes:
>
>semantically, a WHILE loop *IS* the following:
>
>   10 IF (cond) THEN              !WHILE
>         ... body of loop ...
>      GOTO 10
>      ENDIF                       !END WHILE
>
>Proper commentary will elucidate this further, and you should never
>use the label as the target of any *other* GOTO.  

The authors of "Numerical Recipes" observed that it is not the GOTO that
is the problem -- it is the label.  When you see a GOTO, you know exactly 
what is supposed to happen.  But when you see a label, a branch to it could 
have come from anywhere.  Using GOTOs and labels as carefully as implied 
by Jim's last comment is one trick to writing clean, structured Fortran.

	-P.
-- 
************************f*u*cn*rd*ths*u*cn*gt*a*gd*jb*************************
Peter S. Shenkin, Department of Chemistry, Barnard College, New York, NY 10027
(212)854-1418    shenkin@avogadro.barnard.columbia.edu   shenkin@cunixf.BITNET
******************** The singular of "media" is "medium". ********************
Xref: sparky comp.edu:1482 comp.lang.fortran:3372 comp.lang.misc:2887 comp.arch:9168 sci.math:10863 sci.edu:958
From: craig@bunsen.rosemount.com (Craig Taylor)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: how many usa comp sci grads per year?
Date: 24 Aug 92 20:12:47 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Rosemount, Inc.

Approximately how many people graduate from US 4 year
schools with computer science degrees each year?  I guess
this includes other programs with similar names.

I'm also interested in finding out about how may take
the computer science subject GRE.  This is for a friend.

Thanks in advance.
-craig



-- 
Craig F. Taylor
craig@rosemount.com
Work (612) 895-2254
Home (612) 454-4994
Xref: sparky comp.edu:1467 comp.lang.fortran:3357 comp.lang.misc:2872 comp.arch:9143 sci.math:10826
From: davsmith@nic.cerf.net (David Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch,sci.math
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Date: 1 Sep 92 23:45:22 GMT
Followup-To: comp.edu
Organization: CERFnet

In article <1992Aug31.204426.1985@craycos.com> sog@craycos.com (Steve Gombosi) writes:
>>hard enough battle.  
>
>Having recently encountered honors graduates in "Computer Science" who were
>not entirely sure exactly what an assembler is makes me despair of finding
>BSc-s who understand vector processing. Perhaps things are better in
>Canada...
>

Grow your own.  That's what we did at Celerity (which became FPS, now
Cray Research Super Servers).  I spent a couple of years as a student
worker (Kiddie Korps) at Celerity and later hired on full time.  By the
time I got my degree I knew vectors, I knew caches, I knew networks, I
knew I/O, etc. and I'd had a lot of exposure to software engineering
techniques.  Vectors, interleaved memory, HIPPI, etc. are things that
are quite esoteric and you won't find many people period who understand
them.  Grow your own, it's not too hard, and the kids are cheap.

====
David L. Smith
smithd@discos.com or davsmith@nic.cerf.net
-- 
David L. Smith
smithd@discos.com or davsmith@nic.cerf.net
Xref: sparky comp.edu:1460 comp.lang.fortran:3351 comp.lang.misc:2857 comp.arch:9139 sci.math:10820
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: scientists as programmers 
From: ecmtwhk@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Thomas Koenig)
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 08:25:55 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Keywords: supercomputer Fortran

schuette@wl.com (Wade Schuette) writes:

>For that matter, does anyone know if the current supercomputer
>compilers are bright enough to watch their own output actually run
>and learn from it so on their NEXT pass they can stop guessing and 
>make better decisions as to how to optimize the data-dependent sections
>of code?  Or are humans still supposed to do THAT as well?

Current supercomputer compilers still depend to a large extent on
local compiler options, like the C$DIR IVDEP - lines for the Crays.
Some of them are a bit more sophisticated; a Fujistu VP will vectorize
code like

      K = 1
      DO 10 I=1, N
	 IF (A(I).GT.0.) THEN
	    A(K) = A(I)
	    K = K+1
         ENDIF
 10   CONTINUE

if you assert that I.GE.K for the whole body of the loop. This kind of
assertion can be pretty dangerous, however; if you get it wrong, your
program will give you wrong results.

FORTRAN 90 will hopefully eliminate most of the need for sprinkling a
program with options, once it comes into widespread use. One thing it
will not eliminate, however, is the need to choose data structures
carefully before ever writing the first line of code.
-- 
Thomas Koenig, ecmtwhk@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz, ib09@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic
diagram.
Newsgroups: comp.edu
From: schuette@wl.com (Wade Schuette)
Subject: Re: Small Language Wanted
Organization: Warner Lambert / Parke-Davis
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 19:11:31 GMT

In article <l9ngfdINNgj5@almaak.usc.edu> ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:

>Case is a valuable tool for revealing the structure of the
>code on screen.  You will quickly evolve rules of thumb for
>when uppercase is used.  Different people choose different
>rules, but the point is: combined with good rules of thumb,
>case sensitivity is an excellent policy for making code more
>readable on screen.
> [...]

I have trouble perceiving case and font (too many hours in front of
a VDT?), but no trouble with color.    Of course, it's hard to 
describe color, unless one uses a palette of 12 or so.  

I'd sure like to have a code-development editor which could handle
variable color text, which would have no meaning to the compiler, but
which I could use (instead of comments) to record the degree of 
confidence I have in certain lines, or number of times a loop iterated
(or executed at all), etc.  

Then I could tell, after I had meshed them together, stable long-term
code (maybe an attractive gold color) with stuff I just hacked together
for the moment to try something out (puce, perhaps.)

Or, I could turn on the : change color to red of all code I've altered
in the past 24 hours. Or in a team, color code each other's code. or
so.   Anyone have an editor which handles color code, besides MORE-II
on the Mac?

-- 
==================================================================
R. Wade Schuette     |  All opinions expressed are personal,    
Ann Arbor, MI USA    |  not to be attributed to my employer.
schuette@wl.com      |
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran