Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!caip!topaz!ll-xn!nike!lll-crg!seismo!gatech!akgua!usl!elg From: elg@usl.UUCP (Eric Lee Green) Newsgroups: net.cse Subject: Re: cs and ce Message-ID: <888@usl.UUCP> Date: Sat, 30-Aug-86 19:32:56 EDT Article-I.D.: usl.888 Posted: Sat Aug 30 19:32:56 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Sep-86 08:32:16 EDT References: <1099@bu-cs.bu-cs.BU.EDU> Reply-To: elg@usl.UUCP (Eric Lee Green) Organization: USL, Lafayette, LA Lines: 72 In article <1099@bu-cs.bu-cs.BU.EDU> bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: > >> It frightens me to think that there are people graduating from >>computer science programs today who do not even know what a computer >>is, just how to feed it in Cobol, Pascal or "C". It isn't necessary >>for a CS student to learn advance circuit analysis and design. But >>knowing basic electricity and what purposes such things as >>transistors, filters, phased-lock-loops, etc. serve is basic knowledge >>that is both useful and easy to learn, and should really be taught in >>the early years of a person's CS career > >I guess I am looking at it from a little more pragmatic viewpoint, >being involved in CS education. The curriculum for an undergraduate >is quite crowded. ... ... ... ... ... ... 'phased-lock-loops' sounds >a level or two beyond the detail I would expect from a computer scientist. OK, yes, that's a little beyond what you would expect from your average CS person. I agree, someone whose specialty is something like database systems or such doesn't need to know THAT much about the hardware he's running on. However, I've noticed that CS curriculums have totally ignored the bottom level of computing -- who programmed the little disk controller/DOS in the CBM 1541 disk drive? The EE who designed it! Which is why CBM Dos sux royally... a programmer, as vs. an engineer who happened to know a little 6502 assembly language, would have done a much nicer job of it, and I would be using the DOS, not fighting bugs and "features" in it. But, that couldn't be done... the recent college grads they had doing their programming had no idea how a disk drive worked. In another example, Unix would have never come into being if Kernighan et. al. had not known how to handle disk drives and RS-232 ports... It is impossible for a university to teach someone about all such things. All that can be hoped for is that it teaches the person enough electronics to be able to understand similiar things when they read the documentation. Which requires good knowledge of digital electronics, and enough knowledge of analog electronics so that the person isn't TOTALLY lost when reading the documentation on how to interface to the XYZ disk controller. In an "ideal" curriculum, the students would cover digital electronics in their freshman year as well as the usual 3 hours of introductory programming they take (I've noticed that most CS curriculums mostly have electives in the freshman curriculum, since the student can only take one CS course at a time until he's learned enough to be able to specialize in things like Operating Systems, Databases, etc.). Then, when the student covers the usual course in assembly language and machine organization, typically in the sophomore year or so, you could have a simple microcomputer where they must make something happen at the machine level... I really don't think that learning how to program in IBM 370 assembly language is going to help you when you need to program an IBM PC, Apple 2, C-64, or other simple microcontroller-style device in assembly language, since you can't and don't have to deal with the actual machine with MVS etc. (everything goes through the OS, of course). Which reminds me of something that happened to me about a year ago. A Junior here (when I was a freshman), needed to do some assembly level programming on his IBM PC. He'd taken IBM 370 assembly language here, but didn't have the foggiest notion how to make the PC do anything. Weird sight, a former electronics technician in the freshman curriculum helping a Junior in CS with a programming task... -- Eric Green {akgua,ut-sally}!usl!elg (Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191, Lafayette, LA 70509) Bayou Telecommunication's ML guru, USL student " In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."