HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: kxs5829@ultb.isc.rit.edu (K.X. Saunders )
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch,sci.math
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Date: 3 Sep 92 17:35:43 GMT
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology
Originator: kxs5829@ultb

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.

	I tend to agree ;-), since I'll be graduating soon from one of these
accredited schools and had to take 'em.

	- Kyle

-- 
+-"Remember, [MS]DOS is sort of a UNIX deviant already" - dmoscny@piglet.-----+
|    // Only /\          kxs5829@ultb.isc.rit.edu                 cincinatti. |
| \ //      /--\MIGA     kyle@nick.csh.rit.edu                    oh.us       |
| \X/ SQLdb - $40 rdbms  Rochester Institute of Technology                    |
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.ai.edu,sci.edu,comp.multimedia,misc.education
From: janszel@posen.mff.uniba.cs (Jan Szelepcsenyi)
Subject: Re:    Computer Based Education : Journal List
Organization: Center of Academic Networking, Vienna, Austria
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 18:14:26 GMT


LAAAA43@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be (Peter Arien @ K.U.Leuven - 
Academic Computing Center) once wrote....

>Hello all,
>
>Another topic :
>
>How about starting a mailing list on the use of computers as an education
>tool in higher education.  My first idea was to start a news.group, but
>maybe it would be better to see if people are interested. If so, we can
>always start an official news.group creation procedure and if it passes
>link in the mailing list.
>
>Anybody interested in making a first draft of a charter?
>What topics would be handled in this mailing list? How about :
>
>- who uses what as authoring tool
>- pro's and con's of different tools
>- own experience in the use of computers in higher education
>- pointers to specific articles or other sources of information
>- student administration and scoring
>- when to use what kind of course
>- guidelines to build a course
>- ...
>
>If this has already been done, forgive my ignorance and tell me when and
>where, so I can jump on that wagon.
>
>Greetings.
>
>Peter.
>
>============================== = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ==
>= Peter Arien                  =   LAAAA43@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be          =
>= Academic Computing Center    =   LAAAA43@cc5.kuleuven.ac.be          =
>= K.U.Leuven - Belgium         =   LAAAA43@blekul11.bitnet             =
>= 'It was clear as mud, ... '  =   peter%psl%cc3@cc3.kuleuven.ac.be    =
>============================== = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ==
>
Hello,

it's an excellent idea, indeed.

What about including the computer based DISTANCE EDUCATION, too?
I see, it doesn't belong to higher education, but probably will
be in the next future the most used educational form.

Please, add me on your new mailing list(s).

Best regards,


Jan 


----
Jan Szelepcsenyi                        	Telephone: + 42 7 220863
janszel@posen.mff.uniba.cs              	Address  : ul. A. Mraza 4
                                                	   821 03 Bratislava
							   Czechoslovakia
From: jgj@ssd.csd.harris.com (Jeff Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Date: 8 Sep 92 19:06:26 GMT
	<KERS.92Sep4154056@cdollin.hpl.hp.com> <135691@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Followup-To: comp.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: I would rather be windsurfing.
In-reply-to: blair@lll-crg.llnl.gov's message of 8 Sep 92 16:08:19 GMT


> Wrong.  If your compiler uses ANY kind of table-driven parsing scheme, it is
> next to impossible to allow programmer-defined operators. 

Strange, I have yet to see a useful language that *didn't* allow you
to add an arbitrary number of new prefix operators, that can take any
number (or even varible numbers) of arguments.  They are usually
called functions, procedures, subroutines or something like that. :-)

--
============================================================================
Jeffrey Glen Jackson  _|_Satan jeered, "You're dead meat Jesus, I'm gonna
jgj@ssd.csd.harris.com |     bust you up tonight."
x5120                  | Jesus said, "Go ahead, make my day."
                   ~~~~~~~~~ -- Carman, "The Champion"
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
	Politically, I am neither conservative nor liberal --
		     I think for myself instead.
Xref: sparky comp.edu:1573 comp.lang.fortran:3472 comp.lang.misc:2969 comp.arch:9281 sci.math:11121
From: meyer@dbsun.uucp (Don Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch,sci.math
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Date: 8 Sep 92 15:10:53 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: BioMerieux-Vitek, St. Louis Mo.

In article <Bu2DnM.J4E@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>In article <1992Sep4.114720.25228@dbsun.uucp> meyer@dbsun.uucp (Don Meyer) writes:
>>If you don't have floating point hardware, or if the precision need
>>surpasses that of your floating point hardware you will almost
>>certainly have a subroutine call made by the compiler anyway.
>>This is an optimization/compiler-quality issue as opposed to
>>a pure "language" issue IMHO.
>
>This is not necessarily the case.  At least on some machines, one can
>handle twice that precision without calling a subroutine for floating
>point operations.  For integer even triple and quadruple precision 
>often should be programmed without a subroutine call.

That's what I said, isn't it?  It's heavily dependant on the hardware,
as well as the speed versus code-size tradeoff desired.

Don
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
meyer%dbsun.uucp@wupost.wustl.edu        |||     I am at two with nature.
Opinions expressed are personal.         |||       -- Woody Allen
Xref: sparky comp.edu:1669 comp.lsi.cad:952
From: reid@ss6.cps.msu.edu (Dr Richard J. Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lsi.cad
Subject: Real-Time Karnaugh available.
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:27:52 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Michigan State University
Originator: reid@ss6.cps.msu.edu


A test-version of a Real-Time Karnaugh Kalculator
is now available for ftp distribution.

This Gadget runs on SPARC's under OpenWindows
and gives the algebraic minimal SOP form for
the Karnaugh Map entered.

  Ftp the executable (binary).

  Use "anonymous" ftp login to acs.msu.edu (35.8.56.90).
  
  Rtk is in the pub/arch subdirectory.

  Only the binary is being distributed--remember to set
  ftp mode to "binary".

Send reports of successful usage or any comments to:

  reid@cps.msu.edu

Dick
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch,sci.math
From: fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus James HENDERSON)
Subject: Re: User-Defined Operators (was: Scientists as Programmers (was: Small Language Wanted))
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 05:42:27 GMT

mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (J. D. McDonald) writes:

>kirchner@uklira.informatik.uni-kl.de (Reinhard Kirchner) writes:
>
>>If one wants to see and USE a language with user definable operators:
>
>>Take Pascal-XSC. It is available on all unix machines since it compiles to
>>standard C. It allows users to define operators monadic and dyadic, and it
>>comes with many of them for interval, vector, matrix, complex etc.
>>computations.
>
>However, the results will be no faster .... and almost surely slower,
>than simply coding in C.

Why "almost surely slower" than C?
Mr. Kirchner says that the language compiles to standard C;
I do not see any reason why the C code produced would be likely to be
worse than writing it in C in the first place.

>What you are describing is **NOT** user definable operators in the sense that
>they are **needed**!! What is needed is the ability to define operators
>that map one-to-one to the exact machine operations that are present,
>to give the fastest possible results.

gcc offers exactly this capability (see the documentation regarding
"Extended Asm").
It does not allow the user to introduce arbitrary new operators; however
it appears likely that using the combination of Pascal-XSC and gcc you
could achieve what you are after.

>What you describe adds no new capabilities to the language. You would
>still need assembler to access the full capabilities of the machine.
>Remember that **NO** langauage can ever add capabilities to assembler,
>because assembler can do anything. HLLs  can only prevent use of 
>things assembler can do.

What about the "capability" to write portable code?
What about the "capability" to write <application XYZ> in less
than N lines of code? In less than M hours of programming time?
For a cost of less than D dollars?
What about the "capability" to write complex programs that even first year
students can understand?

If you are arguing that HLLs are not useful, then you are obviously wrong.
If you are trying to point out that assembler is Turing-complete, then so what?
In rare situations, it is necessary to use assembler. But for the great
majority of cases, it is far more cost-effective to use a HLL.

-- 
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: mathog@seqvax.caltech.edu (David Mathog)
Subject: Re: Case Sensitivity (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Division of Biolgy, CALTECH
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 18:42:00 GMT

In article <999@engcon.marshall.ltv.com>, rodgers@engcon.UUCP (KMRODGERS) writes...

>I hate contributing to this particular religious warfare (hence the changed
>Subject: line), but I think that case sensitivity, WHEN PROPERLY USED, is
>(IMHO) a Good Thing.  The simple case cited above shows the bad features of
>case sensitivity, but sometimes case is relevant to the problem domain.
>Example: most of my work involves air vehicle stability and control
>(Advertisement!), and I find myself constantly having to write equations of
>motion routines for various analysis tools.  For s&c, several quantities
>known as aerodynamic stability derivatives are used.  These are represented
>in handwritten or typeset form as as capital "C" followed by various upper
>and lowercase subscripts. The case of the subscript is important!  E.g.,
>cap "C" sub "L" is lift coefficient, while cap "C" sub "l" is rolling moment
>coefficient -- two drastically different quantities.  It is most convenient
>and readable (at least to an s&c engineer, and nobody else could/would have
>an interest in these particular codes) to directly translate these in my
>code(s) as CL and Cl, respectively.

Sure, but it's a recipe for maintenance problems should one of the 99.999%
of C programmers who aren't s&c engineers ever be called upon to modify the
code.  That said, Fortran code with variables named I12, I21, I13, I31 (and 
so forth) is just about as difficult to maintain.

There must be some studies on the rate at which programmers misread code as
a function of variable length and format - anybody out there know the
results? 

David Mathog
mathog@seqvax.caltech.edu
Newsgroups: comp.edu
From: amos@huji.ac.il (amos shapir)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.arch,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Date: 8 Sep 92 14:55:19 GMT
Reply-To: amos@cs.huji.ac.il
Followup-To: comp.edu
Organization: Mail to News Gateway at Wang Labs

hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

>One of my students came up with the following, which is a much more
>common situation than most believe.  It is desired to read an element
>from a buffer location, with an interrupt if the buffer empties.  Now
>this is very much like reaching a cache page boundary, but a user
>program is needed to correct this exception.  Since the hardware
>for handling this, and some of the software, is essentially already
>in place, could it not be extended?  With the present setup, only with
>considerable difficulty; at design time, easily.

Not as easily as it looks to a programmer (I admit I also thought this
way before working with the designers).  In this age of multiple
parallel units and pipelining, designers can save a *lot* of run time
and chip space if the software people - mainly compiler writers - can
assure them users will not use certain features at certain
circumstances.  Now, which features get left out is a matter of
tradeoffs and some politics, in which small users (e.g.  statisticians)
lose out; if you want to keep a feature in, tell the designers it's
needed for COBOL...  :-(
--
	Amos Shapir		Net: amos@cs.huji.ac.il
Paper: The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem, Dept. of Comp. Science.
       Givat-Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
Tel: +972 2 585706               GEO: 35 11 46 E / 31 46 21 N
From: rrw@elden.cse.nau.edu (Bob Wier)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: 2nd try: Removal of Accreditation
Date: 9 Sep 92 19:53:44 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff AZ
Originator: rrw@elden.cse.nau.edu

Having received no responses on this the first time, I 
thought I would try again now that more people are back
for the fall semester.

I'm interested in what may happen with accreditation of
programs given the severe cutbacks/layoffs which are occuring
at some universities (mine included).  If you were awarded
say, a "6R" a couple of years ago in the past, under what
criteria might CSAB or ABET come in and do a re-evaluation
to determine if the faculty/staff situation has fallen below
established minimums?  What might trigger such a re-
evaluation?

THANKS!

 - Bob Wier

  ---------- insert favorite standard disclaimers here ----------
                   College of Engineering
      Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff Arizona
  Internet: rrw@naucse.cse.nau.edu | BITNET: WIER@NAUVAX | WB5KXH
Newsgroups: comp.edu
From: hamilton@robin.rtp.dg.com (Eric Hamilton)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 15:29:35 GMT
Organization: Data General Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC

Dijkstra once remarked that the single best predictor of a person's
programming ability is the abilty to write well in his/her native language.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Hamilton				+1 919 248 6172
Data General Corporation		hamilton@dg-rtp.rtp.dg.com
62 Alexander Drive			...!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!hamilton
Research Triangle Park, NC  27709, USA
Newsgroups: comp.edu
From: jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Subject: Re: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 19:42:56 GMT

In article <135691@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>, blair@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Gary Blair) writes:
|> [...]
|> Wrong.  If your compiler uses ANY kind of table-driven parsing scheme, it is
|> next to impossible to allow programmer-defined operators.  The parser must
|> know what an operator looks like, and what precedence it has  with respect
|> to all other operators.  This is usually predetermined, at
|> compiler-generation time.  

This is an example of the overlap between syntax and semantics.  At the
lexical level, the only issue is what constitutes an operator:

      op_char ::= @ | # | $ | % | ^ | & | `*' | - | `+' | `=' | / | \
                | < | > | `~' | ! | `|'

      operator ::= op_char+

That is, an operator is defined as one or more characters from the
set defined as `op_char'.  Operators are delimited by anything not
in the set.  There is no ambiguity at the lexical level about this
definition of operators.  (Some characters quoted because they are
part of the meta-syntax of the lexical scanner-generator).

Once identified, the operator is looked up in a symbol table to determine
part of its semantic properties - like its precedence, associativity, etc..
There is no reason why this symbol table need be generated statically
as part of the *built-in* properties of the compiler.  Since *most*
modern compilers use a split-level syntax (lexical being separate from
the rest) and since most interpose a `screener' between the lexical
level and the rest, most compilers could be enhanced in this way.

The grammar for expressions would be like Haskell's:

                 0
      exp ::= exp

         i       i+1    (n,i)    i+1        i       i
      exp ::= exp    [op      exp   ] | lexp  | rexp

          i         i      i+1    (l,i)   i+1 
      lexp ::= (lexp  | exp   ) op     exp

          i       i+1  (r,i)     i      i+1
      rexp ::= exp   op     (rexp  | exp   )

Where `n' means non-assocaitive, `l' means left associative, `r' means
right associative, and these rules are actually repeated for each 
precedence `i' that you allow.  Prefix and prostix rules can also 
be added.

Having said this, I would personally caution users not to define too
many operators.  There are very few for which a natural precedence
and associativity (or even a natural notation) can be clearly identified.
Overuse of user defined operators can lead to less legible code, not
more legible.

-- 
J. Giles
From: pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: 2nd try: Removal of Accreditation
Date: 14 Sep 92 01:58:51 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: The College On The Other Side Of Route One

In article <5493@naucse.cse.nau.edu> rrw@elden.cse.nau.edu (Bob Wier) writes:
=Having received no responses on this the first time, I 
=thought I would try again now that more people are back
=for the fall semester.
=
=I'm interested in what may happen with accreditation of
=programs given the severe cutbacks/layoffs which are occuring
=at some universities (mine included).  If you were awarded
=say, a "6R" a couple of years ago in the past, under what
=criteria might CSAB or ABET come in and do a re-evaluation
=to determine if the faculty/staff situation has fallen below
=established minimums?  What might trigger such a re-
=evaluation?

I don't speak for ABET but as a former visitor, it seems that ABET is
too busy doing scheduled visits to consider doing an early visit. I
suspect that they (as do we) hope that the enrollment situation is
merely the low region in a cyclical pattern and that it would be rash to
remove accreditation from a school just because they had problems in the
low period.
Xref: sparky comp.edu:1571 comp.lang.fortran:3471
From: bohy6489@iscsvax.uni.edu
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: What *is* computer science, anyway?
Date: 9 Sep 92 13:26:50 -0500
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

I would be interested in knowing how some of the people who read this group
*regularly* would answer the following:

Define (in 50 words or less) Computer Science.

Part of this is because I really *do* want to know.  The other part has to do
with a course I am currently taking.  Please e-mail your answers to
bohy@att1.uni.edu before September 14, 1992.  If anyone is interested in my
doing such, after I have used the definitions for what I need, I could post
them (making each individual's definition anonymous).

I truly appreciate your cooperation in this "survey".  Try not to make these
defnintions overly long - I'd like to think we could be concise about the whole
thing.  To avoid the flame war for now, I shall refrain from posting my own
definition.  These things will be read objectively (as possible), and I have no
intention of voicing my agreement or disagreement with anyone's opinion.  I'm
just collecting some "data".

Thanks again!

===============================================================================
Jim Bohy                                        | "If you have to ask, you'll
Graduate Student - Computer Science Education   |  never know..."
University of Northern Iowa                     | 
Cedar Falls, IA  50614                          | - Louis Armstrong, when asked
bohy@att1.uni.edu                               |   what jazz is.
===============================================================================
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc
From: fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus James HENDERSON)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 16:13:33 GMT

hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

>There is nothing for which a degree should be required.  What counts is the
>knowledge and ability, not grades and credits, and at this time, all a degree
>shows is grades and credits.  The only programming now taught to any extent
>is the use of inadequate HLLs, with not understanding of the real job of
>programming, which is to use the power of the machine to solve the problem
>of the user in such a manner as not to waste time and money.

The vast majority of current programmers use high level languages
precisely BECAUSE they want to solve their users' problems in such a
manner as not to waste time and money.

If you are going to brand HLLs as "inadequate", please take it to
alt.religion.computers.

-- 
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!
Xref: sparky comp.edu:1639 comp.lang.fortran:3536 comp.lang.misc:3047 comp.arch:9385 sci.math:11336