Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.modula2,comp.lang.scheme
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!europa.chnt.gtegsc.com!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!utnut!cannon.ecf!hongd
From: hongd@ecf.toronto.edu (HONG  DUC)
Subject: Re: Comparison of languages for CS1 and CS2
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: spark21.ecf
Message-ID: <DAszCJ.Cvx@ecf.toronto.edu>
Sender: news@ecf.toronto.edu (News Administrator)
Organization: University of Toronto, Engineering Computing Facility
References: <3pdnsi$i2v@urvile.MSUS.EDU> <AST.346.2FE6B407@postman.hibo.no> <3s75k7$cji@news.ccit.arizona.edu> <DAs6GK.1D8@inmet.camb.inmet.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 23:17:07 GMT
Lines: 31
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.edu:13016 comp.lang.ada:31770 comp.lang.c++:135356 comp.lang.modula2:11870 comp.lang.scheme:12961

In article <DAs6GK.1D8@inmet.camb.inmet.com>,
Arra Avakian <arra@harp.camb.inmet.com> wrote:
>In article <3s75k7$cji@news.ccit.arizona.edu>,
>Frank Manning <frank@bigdog.engr.arizona.edu> wrote:
>> [...]
>>After I picked up my jaw from the floor, I thought about it awhile, and I
>>was intrigued. Assembler would give the students a peek at what actually
>>happens in the guts of the machine, and maybe a higher-level language
>>wouldn't be such a mystery after that. Maybe that approach makes sense.
>>
>>Hmmmm...
>>
>>-- Frank Manning
>
>I found this worked for me 35 years ago (SPS for IBM 1620 + Fortran
>II).  The SPS assembly language was believably dumb, revealing that the
>machine was not mysteriously "smart". The Fortran II mystified me,
>until I got to understand what a compiler was. By the way, this was
>between my freshman and sophomore years in high school, at an MIT
>summer course taught by Eliot Bird. (Is he listening?)
>
>The Fortran compiler was quite literally awkward, consisting of
>several boxes of cards. You fed your source deck following the first
>pass of the compiler. It would punch out the object deck, which you
>would feed back into the card reader along with what I think was the
>linker/load/run time library. No disk or OS back then.
>
>Arra Avakian

Debugging must have been a hell of a lot of fun... hole punchers anyone?

