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From: robt@molihp.UUCP (Robert L Thurlow)
Newsgroups: net.cse,net.lang.pascal,net.college
Subject: Re: pascal ass intro. language
Message-ID: <147@molihp.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Feb-86 18:03:08 EST
Article-I.D.: molihp.147
Posted: Tue Feb 25 18:03:08 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Feb-86 17:31:42 EST
References: <192@bu-cs.UUCP> <4253@ut-sally.UUCP> <497@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: robt@molihp.UUCP (Robert L Thurlow)
Organization: Moli Energy, Vancouver, B.C., CANADA
Lines: 29
Approved: molihp 67 72 192
Summary: 

[]
In article <497@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>I hate Pascal as much as anybody who's had to implement one, but I will
>second it as the choice for an introductory course.
>

    I also cast my vote for Pascal, but think that more  exposure  is to
other  languages is  necessary,  especially to an assembly  language.  I
learned Algol-W and FORTRAN first and got an idea about  algorithms, and
then  engineering  gave  a feel  for  limited  resources  with  assembly
language  on an 8080  (gack,  barf, even  worse  than an 8088!  :-) with
almost no memory.  Then I got into Pascal, 'C' and the other things, and
I found I had a lot more respect and  understanding  for the machine and
the problems you can get into.  What highlighted this was the System/370
assembler they throw in at the end of the second-year  computer  science
courses at UBC; a large  portion of the class were  fighting just to get
the concepts of memory and registers  straight while the engineers  were
basking in the luxury of the  architecture  compared to the 8080.  (Hey,
Al, this thing does  floating  point  math!  All by itself!  :-) Most of
the class was fuzzy about looking  around for the resources you have and
using them  properly,  anf this was only due to lack of exposure to what
is REALLY going on under  there.  If your  teaching  Pascal can spit out
assembly  code,  perhaps  showing the students  what it looks like would
help.

# UUCP : ...!ubc_vision!molihp!robt			Robert Thurlow	   #
<DISCLAIMER : my thoughts are my own, and are void where prohibited by law.>
# "There was something fishy aboout the butler.  I think he was a Pisces,  #
#  probably working for scale."				- Nick Danger      #