Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!ncrlnk!ncrcce!c10sd3!c10sd1!johnson
From: johnson@c10sd1.StPaul.NCR.COM (Wayne D. T. Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Cynic's Guide to Software Engineering, part 4
Message-ID: <366@c10sd1.StPaul.NCR.COM>
Date: 15 Apr 88 17:14:08 GMT
References: <2677@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: johnson@c10sd1.StPaul.NCR.COM (Wayne D. T. Johnson)
Distribution: na
Organization: NCR Comten, St Paul
Lines: 26
Keywords: Software Engineering Education

In article <2677@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> neff@Shasta.stanford.edu (Randall Neff) writes:
>
>Languages
>   Fortran, Cobol, Simula, Apl, Snobol
>   Algol 60, Pascal, Modula-2, C, C++
>   Ada, Concurrent C
>   Common Lisp, Prolog,  latest functional programming fad
>   Smalltalk, object oriented
>

I noticed a lack of any Assembly language in there.  I feel a good 
understanding of the hardware of ANY machine (hopefully a somwhat industry
standard one) and its associated object/assembly code is very useful.  I've
seen too many SEs who know nothing of the machine code, trying to fix their
software by "twiddeling"* when the simple answer is staring them in the face
if only they knew how to read a dump.

* twiddeling - making small changes to code to see if that might fix it.
This includes adding occasional chicken tracks (print/printf/write etc.
statments that mark the trail the software took).

-- 
Wayne Johnson                 (voice) 612-638-7665
NCR Comten, Inc.           (internet) johnson@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM or
Roseville MN 55113                    johnson@c10sd1.StPaul.NCR.COM
The comments stated here do not reflect the policy of NCR Comten.