HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Followup-To: comp.edu,comp.lang.misc,sci.math
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 14:41:52 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.133810.24957@newsroom.bsc.no> izahi@bsc.no (Raul Izahi Lopez Hernandez) writes:
>    A good compiler and a good optimizer can help any scientist to write
> reasonable code, however there is no software yet that can help a CS
> person write any physics code.

I don't know any compiler that can make up for the choice of a bad algorithm.
If the program uses bogo-sort it may work, but it'll sure hold things up later
on when you start using live data.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                               `-_-'
$ EDIT/TECO LOVE                                              'U` 
%TECO-W-OLDJOKE Not war?                        Have you hugged your wolf today?
Ferranti Intl. Ctls. Corp.      Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012       +1 713 274 5180
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran
From: jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Subject: Re: Case Sensitivity (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 19:58:06 GMT

In article <9SEP199210424176@seqvax.caltech.edu>, mathog@seqvax.caltech.edu (David Mathog) writes:
|> [...]
|> 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? 

I have a Pascal book (at home, or I would quote it directly) which 
elegantly makes the case *against* long identifiers by arguing *for*
them.  They compare Fortran-like identifiers (say GRDSIZ and BOXSIZ)
to Pascal identifiers (like Size_of_Grid and Size_of_Box) and conclude
that the latter are best.  Well, I disagreed (and their examples made
the point better than mine).  If two identifiers specify different
things, their *differences* should be the emphasis of the names - not
their similarities.  Reading lots of *long* identifiers is just as
prone to error and misunderstanding as having inadequately short ones.

I think there's no doubt that restricting identifier lengths arbitrarily
in the language design (to anything shorter than 16 or 20 anyway) is not 
conducive to well written code.  But, arbitrary use of extremely long 
identifiers, just to use up the space, should not be the result.  In the 
above examples, GRID_SZ and BOX_SZ are admirable - yet are not long.
Extremely long identifiers (more than 10-16 characters, say) should
only be necessary when you're trying to emphasize something very
unusual or when you have very subtle distinctions between what two 
(or more) variables do.

-- 
J. Giles
Xref: sparky comp.edu:1589 comp.lang.fortran:3485 comp.lang.misc:2978 comp.arch:9305 sci.math:11151
From: sproven@cs.strath.ac.uk (Simon B Proven IE91)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc,comp.arch,sci.math
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Date: 9 Sep 92 13:47:57 GMT
Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Glasgow, Scotland.

In article <1992Aug31.184805.10913@texhrc.uucp> ak45ldp@Texaco.com (Larry D. Pyeatt) writes:
>1416@hubcap.
>Sender: news@texhrc.uucp
>Organization: Texaco
>Lines: 40
>Xref: strath-cs comp.edu:5161 comp.lang.fortran:8714 comp.lang.misc:10926 comp.arch:31923 sci.math:28086
>Nntp-Posting-Host: aisun
>
>I am afraid that I have to agree.  There is very little consensus about 
>what courses a CS degree should require.  For my own degree, we were 
>required to take Calculus III, Physics, Chemistry, EE and other science and
>engineering courses.  However, I have seen many CS graduates from other 
>schools who are little more than glorified COBOL programmers.  It really
>annoys me to be lumped in with them.  There is a wide variation in  the
>quality of CS degrees.  If you are unhappy with CS graduates, you need
>only look to another university.

This is a good point - and IMHO it supports the idea of multidiscipline
degree courses.  The course I'm on - Information Engineering, to be renamed
Computer and Electronic Systems - is such a course.  Not only do we learn
to write code, but we also get Calculus III, physics, electronics, and
algebra - all needed IMHO to be a good programmer, as a programmer must
understand what his program is doing before he can code it properly.

The elective courses available to the student and what the student chooses
to take for these is also important.  I chose to do a course on manufacturing,
two physics courses and a robotics course.

Being overspecialised is a very dangerous trap.  It limits your career
oppurtunties, and if you choose the wrong speciality it's hard to change
later without wasting a lot of effort.  I was not sure if I wanted to do
EEE or CS - but IE gave the ideal solution.

>Larry D. Pyeatt                 The views expressed here are not
>Internet : pyeatt@texaco.com    those of my employer or of anyone

mad@bike
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.functional,comp.lang.misc,comp.parallel
From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Subject: Re: Scientists as Programmers (was Re: Small Language Wanted)
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 13:18:15 GMT

In article <ESH.92Sep3113524@curly.tekbspa.com> esh@curly.tekbspa.com (Edward S. Hirgelt) writes:

>On 3 Sep 92 15:25:12 GMT,
>sabry@rice.edu (Amr Sabry) said:

>Amr> In article <Bu08uF.HBC@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>Amr> |> There is generally no single algorithm optimal on all machines, so the
>Amr> |> hardware considerations at least have to be known to the programmer.

>Amr> Don't forget: you also need to know about the design of your car to
>Amr> drive it optimally, the design of your fridge and oven are also
>Amr> crucial, so is the design of your TV.

>I suspect that Amr means this humorously. However, there is a kernel of
>truth in it. Herman is talking about optimal, wringing the last ounce of
>performance out of an algorithm. To do the same to your car, you better
>know that you ought not exceed 6500 RPM on the engine (or whatever the
>limit is for your engine/transmission combination) or that your
>car or truck wasn't designed to tow a 8000 pound trailer.

It may be more serious than just wringing out the last ounce.  It may be
doing a job in one minute rather than one hour, or not even getting it
done.  It is often possible to see that for a particular type of algorithm
to do the job, far too many resources are needed.  

One of my colleagues was interested in a problem with many cases.  Now he
did check out what had to be done using _Mathematica_.  But it was necessary
to reprogram the computations in C to get them done in minutes rather than
tying up the multi-user machine for days.

>The point in many of these and related discussions is knowing when you
>need to be truly optimal. If you're pushing the limits with your
>algorithms and/or problems, you need the fastest solution. Sometimes
>that requirement exceeds the need to be portable or to be readable.

>When solving a problem, know what the problem is first, then you can
>decide on the tools to solve it and evaluate the trade-offs involved.
>Sometimes that takes a software developer, sometimes that takes a
>scientist, sometimes it takes both. It also takes a good knowledge of
>the tools that are available that might be applicable to the problem.

There are algorithms which are, from a standpoint of the number of bits
used, quite cheap, and yet, the question remains as to whether they are 
even worth the effort programming them.  The present languages are 
cetainly inadequate to allow this; looking at the next bit in a bit
stream is costly even in assembler, when one has to consider that the
algorithm cannot know where in a word the bit is, or even whether the
bit buffer has run out, without explicitly checking.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!pop.stat!hrubin(UUCP)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.edu,sci.physics,sci.math
From: panoff@hubcap.clemson.edu (r m panoff)
Subject: Book Recommendations for Middle/High Schools on Computers
Followup-To: panoff@ncsc.org
Summary: prove the internet works by answering this question!
Keywords: book computer internet
Organization: North Carolina Supercomputing Center
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 19:52:25 GMT


I have received the following inquiry from one of our middle school
teachers who is participating in a pilot telecommunications and computing
project.  This is your chance to show how the network can be used to get
answers and to connect otherwise isolated individuals to interested
experts!  Please send all answers directly to the teacher, Barbara Pedersen:

pedersen@cardinal.ncsc.org

Thanks in advance for all of your help in a) answering her query, and 
b) demonstrating the power of networking.

(if you cc me on your response, I will summarize responses for the net)

Bob Panoff

Here is her original request:

> Date: Mon, 7 Sep 92 15:40:32 -0400
> From: Barbara Pedersen <pedersen@cardinal.ncsc.org>
> To: panoff
> Subject: Books
> 
> 
> Do you happen to know of any books written for high school age or
> slightly below which explain computers and some the the terminology
> pertaining thereto? We are looking for some very basic explanations
> and information that our kids can use for resource purposes.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Barbara
> 

-- 
rmp, for the Bob's of the World
From: matloff@mole.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: (re-posting) ANNOUNCEMENT:  Multiprocessor Simulator
Date: 16 Sep 92 00:14:29 GMT
Organization: Div. of Computer Science, University of California at Davis

(This is a re-post.  Sorry for the inconvenience if this appears
more than once.) 

               MulSim Multiprocessor Simulator

	             Norman S. Matloff
              University of California at Davis
	        Division of Computer Science
	       matloff@heather.cs.ucdavis.edu
		      (916) 752-1953

MulSim simulates the operation of a shared-memory multiprocessor system.  
Its processor type is of a RISC design largely similar to the SPARC 
architecture  --  i.e. instructions execute in a single cycle, and it 
is a load/store machine, with all arithmetic operations being done in 
register-to-register mode only  --  with a system of register windows 
being used to store the runtime stack.  User programs are written in 
the assembly language for this architecture.

The user may choose from several types of processor/memory interconnects, 
or may develop his/her own type of interconnect; MulSim has been designed 
in a modular fashion which facilitates the user taking the latter approach.  
There are also optional features which allow the user to do statistics-
gathering, etc.

The system includes a fairly extensive debugging facility, which can be used 
not only for debugging but also for close examination of program behavior, 
e.g. to help identify how memory contention problems arise.

********************************************

The MulSim system is available free of charge for noncommercial use, e.g. 
in universities.  To obtain a copy, please send e-mail to 

		 matloff@heather.cs.ucdavis.edu

Be sure to specify the type(s) of host machine you wish to run MulSim on 
(presently it is available for SPARCstation, DECstation and DOS systems).

Newsgroups: comp.edu
From: king@feline.uucp (KingLeon)
Subject: Re: collaborative work
Organization: Humber College Technology Dept.
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 04:14:15 GMT

In article <20161@plains.NoDak.edu> kmagel@plains.NoDak.edu (ken magel) writes:
> 
>      What is your opinion with regards to the value or harm in having student 
> work together on programming projects?  

Definitely beneficial if properly structured.  As a student some of my best
and worst experiences involved working with others.  As instructor I guess
I impose the following "rules":
1.  All work should be attributed to the person involved.  This also includes
    project co-ordination work.  
2.  Students should submit at least part of the work as individuals.  In
    project courses I've had the group do a presentation with each member of
    the group presenting the section that he/she worked on.
3.  One approach that I find particularly interesting is to have a two
    part assignment where the 1st part involves writing a support library
    and the 2nd part involves applying it.  In the 2nd part I force the
    students to use anybody's 1st part other than their own.  I've also
    had students do performance and robustness tests on other student's
    code as part of their assignment.   The original author has to support
    their code.
4.  Dead hand approach - students build on a project done in a previous 
    year.

Biggest problems:  Students who let their partners down.  I usually let each
partner try and graft their work onto another group - only seems to work when
students are in pairs and its a small group.

       Students who are lazy and try to hide in a group.  Final presentations
work real well here.  I've seen groups go out of their way to support people who
really tried and just clam up for people who  didn't contribute.

Best real world experience outside of co-op.        
Xref: sparky comp.edu:1627 comp.ai.edu:411 sci.edu:984 comp.multimedia:2695 misc.education:3347
From: ljones@andrew.ATL.GE.COM (LeRoy E Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.ai.edu,sci.edu,comp.multimedia,misc.education
Subject: Re:    Computer Based Education : Journal List
Date: 11 Sep 92 17:39:11 GMT
Organization: GE Aerospace, Advanced Technology Labs

In article <8-PCNews-120beta@posen.mff.uniba.cs> janszel@posen.mff.uniba.cs (Jan Szelepcsenyi) writes:
>
>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

Yes, I would definitely enjoy such a mailing list/news group. We could
even contrast the different learning theories as they apply to CBI. I
am particularly interested in any system which supports constructivistic
teaching practices, as I am building such a system myself.

Please add me to the list also.


LeRoy E. Jones


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LeRoy Jones
Advanced Technology Laboratories
General Electric Company, Aerospace
email: 	ljones@fergie.dnet.ge.com
telephone:	609 866 6643
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.edu
From: gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies)
Subject: Re: Are computer "scientists" really scientists? (was: Are programmers Computer Scientists?)
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 04:51:56 GMT

In my opinion, the core of the C.S. discipline is concerned with
speeding up computers.  There are at least 5 different levels at which
a computer scientist can work, starting with the VLSI design level (or
maybe even the transisitor / logic block implementation level).  All
these levels belong to the discipline, including the theoretical
level, which is the highest level of all (speeding up individual
applications, or whole classes of applications).

The alternate core of C.S. is concerned with making computers easier
to use.  This covers everything user interface to language design to
O/S research to network design, and so on.

Don Gillies - gillies@cs.uiuc.edu - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


--
From: gvw@epcc.ed.ac.uk (Greg Wilson)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Small DE Simulation System Wanted
Date: 14 Sep 92 16:51:07 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre

I am looking for a small discrete-event simulation system to use as a
testbed for developing some ideas about parallel programming languages,
and for teaching parallel programming.  My plan is to compile several
parallel dialects of a simple Pascal-like language into the simulation
language, and then let the simulation package worry about scheduling,
memory allocation, etc.

My requirements are:

1) Simplicity --- as the simulation system is going to be the target of
   a compiler, I would like it to be as simple as possible.  I need the
   sort of functionality present in Simula + DEMOS, but probably nothing
   more than that.

2) Visualisability --- both for my own use, and for future use by
   students, it is essential that it be easy to display what's going
   on, e.g. what processes are blocked (and why).  (This is where
   Simula + DEMOS falls down --- no intrinsic visualisation...)

3) Low Cost --- while I suppose it's too much to hope that a PD system
   exists, something cheap enough to be purchased and used for educational
   purposes would be nice.

Any pointers anyone can give me would be very welcome.

Thanks,

 ========================================================================
  Gregory V. Wilson                    ||  For in much wisdom is much
  Technical Coordinator                ||  grief; and he that increaseth
  Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre  ||  knowledge, increaseth sorrow.
  gvw@epcc.edinburgh.ac.uk             ||               - Ecclesiastes
 ========================================================================
Newsgroups: comp.edu
From: schuette@wl.com (Wade Schuette)
Subject: Re: Are computer "scientists" really scientists? (was: Are programmers Computer Scientists?)
Organization: Warner Lambert / Parke-Davis
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 09:53:19 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.045156.6935@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) writes:
>In my opinion, the core of the C.S. discipline is concerned with
>speeding up computers.  There are at least 5 different levels at which
> ...
>The alternate core of C.S. is concerned with making computers easier
>to use.  This covers everything user interface to language design to
> ..
>Don Gillies - gillies@cs.uiuc.edu - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
>

I think CS is concerned with other things as well that have nothing
whatsoever to do with making "computers" (deus ex Machina ex machina)
run faster or be easier to program.  Where did these magic "computers"
come from?  That's like looking at "computers" in 1952 and saying 
CS's are only interested in making arithmetic faster.  Then we got
word processors, and image processors, and multimedia, and collaboration
software, and AI and distributed cognition systems for information fusion...

Where did those come from?  And what's next?  What about artificial
life? Robtotics that surprises even Asimov. 

What's the structure of reasoning and what systems can do it.
What's the structure of WISDOM, and why are humans so bad at it.
What's the best hybrid planet you can design with humans and "computers"
and networks and the 8 things we haven't even dreamed of yet helping?

"programming"?  Bah. That's like saying Mathematicians are "adders".

IMHO  (:-) Wade

-- 
====================================================================
R. Wade Schuette     |  All opinions expressed are personal.| B>   |
Ann Arbor, MI USA    |                                      |   :) |
schuette@wl.com      |   *** "Synergize Scientists!"  ***   | B>   |
From: awakefie@norfolk.vak12ed.edu (Alice Wakefield)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: need simple data base for elementary schools
Date: 9 Sep 92 14:22:22 GMT
Organization: Virginia's Public Education Network (Norfolk)

I am teaching a graduate class on children's literature for
teachers in elementary school.  One assignment is to read 50
children's books and keep brief notes on each book (i.e.,
author, genre, theme, etc.).  These teachers have access to
IBM compatible computers.  We would like to collect these notes
on a simple data base so that we can merge files.  Our hope is
that both teachers and students can search the files to find
topics or authors or genres of interest.  MECC had BookWorm
available for Apple users.  What is available for these
teachers?  It needs to be cheap, simple,  and hold 21 files of 50
books.  Thanks.

Alice Wakefield, Child Study Center, Old Dominion University,
Norfolk, VA 23529
Newsgroups: comp.edu.composition
From: r0mill01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu (COMPDIGEST)
Subject: (Fwd: *C&CD*) Slime Molds and Hypertext (Was: small library...) (9)
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 10:36:33 GMT
Organization: University of Louisville

$undigest -s="Slime Molds and Hypertext (Was: small library...) (9)" [.new_news]cmpd6262.mss

Date: 05 Sep 1992 19:44:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lili Velez <lv08+%ANDREW.CMU.EDU@CARNEGIE.BITNET>
Message-id: <AeeINKW00Uh7M3Vf1z@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Slime Molds and Hypertext (Was: small library...) (9)
Reply-to: Computers & Composition Digest (R. Royar) <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>

Wes compares hypertext to slime molds, saying:

  >     I can do all the research I want to on them,
  >     and I can even teach about them in appropriate
  >     classes, but I shouldn't expect too
  >     many people to handle them on a regular basis.

There _is_, however, a major difference between these two research
objects, and that difference may actually explain why Wes's colleagues
(and, I suspect, many of our own) may view hypertext as an interesting
research area, but not something we expect our students to _use_:
accessiblility.

If left unattended, the average bathroom tile surface can provide
numerous slime molds.  Unfortunately, _nothing_ "spontaneously" provides
hardware capable of running hypertext programs. I have to work with
materials that my students are able to get their hands on....

Lili

*********************************
Lili Fox Velez
Rhetorician in Residence            "Rhet in the Blue Linen Labcoat"
Department of Biological Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University            lv08@andrew.cmu.edu.BITNET
*********************************

 This rhet could be _yours_.....if the Price is Right!


------------------------------
$deassign sys$output
Newsgroups: comp.edu.composition