Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watrose.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watrose!cdshaw From: cdshaw@watrose.UUCP (Chris Shaw) Newsgroups: net.cse Subject: Re: students editing output Message-ID: <7582@watrose.UUCP> Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 20:58:04 EDT Article-I.D.: watrose.7582 Posted: Tue Oct 1 20:58:04 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 01:33:27 EDT References: <433@uvm-cs.UUCP> <1500@brl-tgr.ARPA> <647@bu-cs.UUCP> <150@l5.uucp> <685@bu-cs.UUCP> Reply-To: cdshaw@watrose.UUCP (Chris Shaw) Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 33 In article <685@bu-cs.UUCP> root@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein) writes: >>From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton) >> >>I had a thought. You send students through 4 years of a cs program >>and threaten them with everything under the sun if they cheat. Then you >>ship them out into the real world and I wonder why every third c program >>I see is written by someone who thought that he had to reinvent the >>strcmp, strncmp and related functions. > >Good point, but *I* claim the problem is the insistence on teaching >with Pascal. Your example provides an excellent example of why: > ..all sorts of prattle about the difficulty of using Pascal strings > >The result: Everything ends up to be ad hoc one-shots, forget building >generic libraries, write your own everything. > > -Barry Shein, Boston University What does this have to do with programming in C ? If someone can't or won't learn a news language more suited to his purpose, then you ARE going to get the kind of nonsense above. But when writing C programs, being taught Pascal has almost nothing to do with reinventing the wheel. Being lazy/stupid has a lot more to do with it. Another problem, of course, is institutions which teach "Pascal" as opposed to "Structured Programming", or "FORTRAN" as opposed to "Numerical Analysis". If you regard a computer language as anything more than a tool, then you are going to get people who can't solve problems very well. Chris Shaw watmath!watmum!cdshaw or cdshaw@watmath University of Waterloo In doubt? Eat hot high-speed death -- the experts' choice in gastric vileness ! Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com