Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!pucc!EGNILGES From: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: "Expertise" Message-ID: <7800@pucc.Princeton.EDU> Date: 6 Apr 89 16:44:11 GMT References: <354@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> <7531@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <4972@hubcap.clemson.edu> <22630@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Reply-To: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU Distribution: usa Organization: Princeton University, NJ Lines: 34 Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article In article <22630@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, matloff@tinman.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) writes: > >Sorry for the flames. I don't intend them that way. They were serious >comments, which I'd like to hear comments on. > > Norm On the subject of the usefulness of theory to nonacademic practioners, I was convinced long ago that a good dose of automata and formal language theory is important to programmers. Not the latest results, which too many departments want to focus on, but the fundamental results of Turing. I remember with fondness the light that came on in my student's eyes when I was able to convey to them that following an algorithm can be expressed as yet another algorithm, which is behind the Universal Turing Machine notion and from which so much of software stems. These were not theoretical types, but future applica- tions programmers. I'd like to teach computer science genetically, starting by having people write Turing machines, then machine language, then assembler, then high-level language. The only textbook I've seen which approxim- ates this approach is COMPUTERS AND PROGRAMMING: A NeoClassical Approach, which may no longer be in print. It's by Peter Olivieri and Alan Rubin, I think. It was the last book to use a mythical machine. The career focus of so many students, coupled with the idiotic hiring practices of companies, make students loth to learn mythical machines or even Turing machines, because "nobody uses that in the real world". Edward Nilges O FREUNDE, NICHT DIESE TONEN! SONDERN, LASST UNS ANGHENEMEHRE ANSTIMMEN, UND FREUDENVOLLERE! - Beethoven