Can a low-level programmer learn OOP?

[Wayne Brehaut]

On Sat, 14 Jul 2007 11:49:48 -0600, darren kirby
<bulliver at badcomputer.org> wrote:

>quoth the Wayne Brehaut:
>
>> (I started with Royal McBee LGP 30 machine language (hex input) in
>> 1958, and their ACT IV assembler later! Then FORTRAN IV in 1965. By
>> 1967 I too was using (Burroughs) Algol-60, and 10 years later upgraded
>> to (DEC-10) Simula-67.)
>>
>> Going---going---
>
>Mel? Is that you?
>
>http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html
>

Ha-ha!  Thanks for that!

Although I'm not Mel, the first program I saw running on the LGP-30
was his Blackjack program! In 1958 I took a Numerical Methods course
at the University of Saskatchewan, and we got to program Newton's
forward difference method for the LGP-30.  Our "computer centre tour"
was to the attic of the Physics building, where their LGP-30 was
networked to a similar one at the Univeristy of Toronto (the first
educational computer network in Canada!), and the operator played a
few hands of Blackjack with the operator there to illustrate how
useful computers could be.

A few years later, as a telecommunications officer in the RCAF, I
helped design (but never got to teach :-( ) a course in LGP-30
architecture and  programming using both ML and ACT IV AL, complete
with paper tape input and Charactron Tube
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charactron)  output--handy, since this
display was also used in the SAGE system.

We weren't encouraged to use card games as examples, so used
navigational and tracking problems involving fairly simple
trigonometry.

wwwayne
>-d