From: slinky.cs.nyu.edu!slinky.cs.nyu.edu!nobody@nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Are 'best' universities being targeted for Ada9X
Date: 31 Jul 93 03:13:08 GMT [thread overview]
Message-ID: <23co04$a72@schonberg.cs.nyu.edu> (raw)
While I agree one should not overemphasize the role of a particular language
as an initial teaching language in the first programming course, one should
also not make the mistake of underestimating the influence of the particular
language chosen.
I was amazed at the time by the reaction in the US to EWD's letter on
"gotos considered harmful". I am sure that EWD did not think he was saying
something profound or new, because anyone who was exposed to Algol-60 at
the time knew perfectly well that it was obvious that the use of gotos
should be minimized.
The storm that it caused in the US was I think directly related to the
comparative prevalence of FORTRAN as a first teaching language, and to
typical programmers trained in FORTRAN, the idea of not using gotos was
indeed novel, as was (much more importantly) the notion of microstructure
in programs, which was the underlying issue.
next reply other threads:[~1993-07-31 3:13 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1993-07-31 3:13 Robert Dewar [this message]
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1993-08-02 17:10 Are 'best' universities being targeted for Ada9X Robert I. Eachus
1993-08-02 12:40 Bob Crispen
1993-07-30 14:17 cis.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!xlink.net!f
1993-07-29 17:09 Kenneth Anderson
1993-07-29 13:52 Debora Weber-Wulff
1993-07-29 11:44 Brad Wallet
replies disabled
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox