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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watmum!cdshaw
From: cdshaw@watmum.UUCP (Chris Shaw)
Newsgroups: net.college
Subject: Re: Why force the AT&T at UVM?
Message-ID: <131@watmum.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-May-85 03:52:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmum.131
Posted: Fri May 24 03:52:54 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 25-May-85 00:26:37 EDT
References: <380@uvm-cs.UUCP> <70@gatech.CSNET> <235@phri.UUCP> <294@tilt.FUN> <240@uvm-gen.UUCP> <14627@watmath.UUCP>
Reply-To: cdshaw@watmum.UUCP (Chris Shaw)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 38


>>In article <240@uvm-gen.UUCP> punia@uvm-gen.UUCP (David T. Punia) writes:
>> . . .  Who is better able to select?  A kid fresh out of 
>>high school?  A very special kid, indeed!
>
>The "very special kid"s will avoid your University because they do not wish
>to purchase a computer that doesn't suit them.  I would.
> Jan Gray

Well, be that as it may, I have yet to meet anyone fresh out of high school
who knew enough to make a good decision about what machine to buy. Sure, your
average smart-ass kid has his (her) preferences, but such preferences are 
generally so narrow-minded as to defy rational belief.

This is the typical result of exposure to only one system during high school.
Of course, this is exactly what you will get if all your students use just one
system throughout university: One-system hacks who can do anything on a 6300,
but put them on a different box and they're dead in the water.

On the other hand, people claiming to need lots of CPU are just playing around,
I think. I asked one of these people what required all this power, and he told
me that he once ran a simulation that took ~5 hours of 3033 time. I assume he 
was an undergrad at the time. It only later struck me that 5 hours of mainframe
at the cheapest rate here will cost in excess of $500. It's obvious that this
person's prof wasted considerable amounts of resources by assigning a 
ridiculous project. No doubt the person involved could have learned an equal
amount by doing a simulation taking 10 minutes or less.

I guess my main point is that there is really no reason that student projects
for course credit should be of the same degree of complexity or of a size
equal in hugeness to what one would find in real life. The problems one does
need not be mere toys, but for a compiler course, it seems foolish to assign 
an ADA compiler when a Pascal subset will do for pedagogical purposes.


Chris Shaw    watmath!watmum!cdshaw  or  cdshaw@watmath
University of Waterloo
In doubt?  Eat hot high-speed death -- the experts' choice in gastric vileness !