Re: PROFESSIONAL floating-point algorithms.
From: Arthur J. O'Dwyer (ajo_at_nospam.andrew.cmu.edu)
Date: 01/11/04
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Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 17:22:13 -0500 (EST)
On Sun, 11 Jan 2004, Willem wrote:
>
> Edward wrote:
> ) It's clear to me that because universities have made a bonehead
> ) mistake, and allowed callow students interested ONLY in employment to
> ) force them to teach computer science using C and not Pascal or Algol,
> ) you have to translate everything into C before you accept it, and this
> ) means your judgement is not controlling.
>
> Then I must have been very lucky in my choice of university, because I have
> not been taught C there. (Well, not by a professor anyway, I learned it
> from some fellow students, sort of as a hobby.)
>
> I was taught Pascal, and GCL (which is a pseudo-language designed around
> the concept of proving algorithms.), assembly code (not for any specific
> machine either), but most classes did not incolve programming per se, and
> when code snippets were required, they were usually in some kind of
> pseudo-code, usually like GCL. Pascal was only used in two courses.
These days, at a Real Comp Sci School [TM and ;-)], you'll find me
taking courses taught in Java (introductory stuff and nonmajors classes),
C, some assembly language, and ML (the proving-algorithms equivalent).
<OT>
> ) Nor are you likely to. Gedanken ist frei and as such is anticult, mein
> ) leiber Herr (I use German and not Dutch since I have not yet mastered
> ) the barbaric orthography of the latter, myn heer).
>
> You don't seem to have mastered German either, just the odd word here and
> there, and not even half of them are correct. So could you please stop
> with the German, it's hurting my ears.
I was wondering when someone was going to say that. Hear hear.
</OT>
> ) [Kernighan] uses Visual Basic, a language despised by the "practical
> ) academics" to teach CS to nonmajors at Princeton.
>
> I assume that 'nonmajors' are those that do CS as a side course.
> In that case, it's logical to use a language that is very easy to
> understand, instead of one that is useful for serious work.
Yep. Although of course here [CMU, not Princeton] the nonmajors
get taught Java, which is like C, only worse. :) The really easy-
to-understand language, ML, is taught only to those willing to take
the third semester of CS courses.
-Arthur
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