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From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Which language to teach first?
Message-ID: <193@enea.se>
Date: 19 Aug 89 22:54:32 GMT
Organization: Enea Data AB, Sweden
Lines: 18

Herman Rubin (cik@l.cc.purdue.edu) writes:
>The fundamental operations are not limited to those in C, and the operations
>in a language are not all fundamental, for a specific computer.  Students
>should learn that which operations are hardware, and how fast they are,
>affect the algorithm to be used.

Certainly not in their first year anyway. I'd say that the newly
graduated should have some understanding of these topics, however
there are much more important things like data abstraction, writing
reuauble code etc. One reason is that not all the student will ever
face that kind of problems. If you into information systems, you're
interest in the hardware operations are low. There are so many other
complexities that you could live without another.


-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
The law of gravity should be forbidden execpt in downhills.