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From: fox@rudolf.nscl.msu.edu (Ron Fox)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: Teaching Fortran
Message-ID: <1991Mar19.171137.16397@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Date: 19 Mar 91 17:11:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: msuinfo.1991Mar19.171137.16397
References: <9103131812.AA17727@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <8110@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
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--
In article <8110@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu
(Herman Rubin) writes:
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>From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
>Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
>Subject: Re: Teaching Fortran
>Message-ID: <8110@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
>Date: 18 Mar 91 13:19:30 GMT
>References: <9103131812.AA17727@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
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>In article <9103131812.AA17727@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>,
>taylor@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Ross Taylor) writes:
>> ....
> >  For a 
>> variety of reasons the course fails in that regard.  The 
>> students are unable to create even the simplest of programs and 
>> get them write (pun intended).
>> 
>> As a result, we are currently debating the re-structuring of the 
>> Fortran course and/or its timing.  I would like to hear from 
>> fellow readers of this newsgroup who are involved with education 
>> how their institution and/or dept handles any programming 
>> requirements.
>
>This problem has been encountered elsewhere.  I suspect that the
>main
>reason the course fails is that those teaching the course are
>interested
>primarily in such aspects of the language as data management, IO,
>and
>formatting.  
>  ....

  I've done my share of tutoring for the basic courses that are taught
here
(Mich. State) and what I've seen is not that the course is oriented
towards
formatting or data management at all, but raher that so much emphasis
is
put on the *syntax* of programming in FORTRAN, that nothing is taught
about
how to block out and construct a program given the problem to be
solved.
So students when faced with the blank canvas of an editor screen don't
know how
to decompose the problem into manageble pieces.

>On the other hand, the calculation aspects of Fortran, or any other
>language,
>usually considered of minor importance by CS people, are THE
>important aspect.
>One can see the deficiencies of languages by looking at this point,
>and they
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>are manifold.  
  ^^^^^^^^^^
  Here there's a bit of disagreement.  While I'd certainly understand
that the
bulk of the computing *you* might do is calculational in nature,
please understand
that that's not the case for everyone.  There are several application
programming
domains.  Yours is math/stat, mine is real time data acquisition.  You
need to be
able to express calculation in a notation that is clear and
straightforward, but my
needs are to be able to express data structures and levels of data
abstraction as
well as to access bits of hardware, there are things I do very
comfortably with
PASCAL and C that I'd shudder to think about doing in FORTRAN,
similarly, there
are things I do in FORTRAN I'd shudder to do in PASCAL or C, and there
are things
I need to do in Assembly that I can't do in any of the above.  The key
is picking
the language that fits the application domain you're working in best. 
FORTRAN
is clearly it for Math/Stat, and many problems in Engineering as well.
However,
for some of the mesh/grid methods of problem solution, advanced data
structuring
facilities can certainly help to represent the solution of a problem
in a clear and
understandable way.
		Ron


Ron Fox                     | FOX@MSUNSCL.BITNET      | Where the name 
NSCL                        | FOX@RUDOLF.NSCL.MSU.EDU | goes on before
Michigan State University   | MSUHEP::RUDOLF::FOX     | the quality
East Lansing, MI 48824-1321 |                         | goes in.
USA