Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Non-professional programmers (was: Which language to teach first?)
Message-ID: <14577@bfmny0.UUCP>
Date: 22 Aug 89 04:50:16 GMT
References: <13380@megaron.arizona.edu>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Organization: ^
Lines: 53

Koldinger's point is correct, Gudeman's is actually arrogant.

Every good engineer understands elegance of design.  (Programmers as a
class not only don't have a corner on that market, we're not even big
players.)  What a good engineer may not necessarily share with a
programming whiz is that peculiar aptitude for solving the little
symbolic mind puzzles which 20th century orthodoxy has decided epitomize
"elegance" in programming.  A few do share it, of course.  However to
the extent one is a good and useful engineer, time spent being an
"elegant" programmer is time misused.  It's not what they train and pay
engineers to do -- however often they end up having to do it anyway
these days.  I know this, if I go halves with my draftsman's night
school tuition so he can move up to steam boiler design, he had damn
well better spend those nights learning his steam tables and not trading
clever "C" functions with CS kids!

The really complicated stuff (from a software design standpoint) which
nonetheless does basic things from an engineering point of view (like
CAD/CAM or project documentation systems) should be written by
professional programmers -- and in fact already is.  Engineers just
consult in the design, since they are supposed to know what they want.
(Do they?  Separate issue :-) )  But the simple stuff (from a CS standpoint)
that does complicated engineering things (like beam stress, structural
analysis, fluid dynamics etc) should be programmed by engineers, with
whatever CS professional support is required to keep from wasting the
engineers' time worrying about peripheral stuff.  And "elegance" is
peripheral.  The easiest-to-write program that gets the right answers
(now AND later) is central.

I am not saying that FORTRAN is the best of possible languages for
engineers to use, in fact it wastes their time on just some of those
peripheral things we don't pay them for, like worrying about how an
EQUIVALENCE statement's going to work.  But some language should
exist, FOR engineering, such that its basic structure isn't offensive
to modern understanding of how programs work (as BASIC and FORTRAN
often are), yet it is directly usable in the engineering workplace
once you know the whole language.  Maybe Ada is it, I don't know.
I get the sense that if so, it's not quite ready.  When micros beef
up to the point where any engineering student can afford a PC that
runs Ada, you might see it.

Even then FORTRAN would have to be learned because there is decades'
worth of backlog to support (and believe me, some of these FORTRAN
number bangers have been running the same program for 20 years or
more!  If it ain't broke...).  But it would be an advanced elective
for those who anticipate working (or find they need to work) with
old code.  Surely if you taught the right language to begin with,
FORTRAN would be easy to pick up as a sideline later.

Guess I ran on - they got me started. :-)
-- 
"We walked on the moon --	((	Tom Neff
	you be polite"		 )) 	tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET