[Tutor] A slighty off topic question/rant for the experienced .

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> the real world. I felt sorry about my friends who had hardly ever
> seen a resistor or a capacitor before they started with the electric
> circuit theory. It was just meaningless words to them, 

Me too. I worked for 9 years as a technician before going to 
university to do my degree. Some topics - the math! and quantum 
mechanics - I found very hard after 9 years out of school but 
the electronics bits were easy.

> Fortunately where I was studying people we usually selling lecture
> notes for a reasonable cost, so I could sit and listen and think.

Hah! I wish. We had to take notes and listen.... :-)

On the topic of studying exam technique rathger than the topic in 
question, one class test completely confused many students. It 
was first year electrical theory and instead of drawing the 
circuits in the usual rectangular style the prof drew the lines 
at all kinds of weird angles. Many students then couldn't figure 
out which were in series and which in parallel. It was  a sobering 
lesson.

The equivalent thing in CS would be if a programming exam asked 
about the operation of function written in a language the students 
had never studied. Provided it was the same programming style it 
should be possible to work with it, but many students would, 
I suspect, just panic...

> I don't know about Forth, I used to code some FIG-Forth on my old
> in small embedded systems. I think there are still cheap 
> microcontrollers that can be programmed in Forth. (See 

The monitor program on Sun workstations is in forth. The masochistic 
can halt their sparcstation, drop into that big white screen and 
start forthing away! :-)

Alan g.
Author of the 'Learning to Program' web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld