[Tutor] Question

[bob gailer]

6/19/2010 11:51 AM, Steve Bricker wrote:
> Back in ancient days, my college training began with FORTRAN the first 
> semester, then COBOL, ALC (BAL), and RPG in the second semester. 

Back in even more ancient days, my college training began with IBM 650 
machine language, then ALC (SOAP), then CLASSMATE all of which which we 
fed into the computer via a card reader

That was all a subset of a logic class. That was all the school offered 
computer-wise then.

//I also reacted to introducing programming via pseudo-code. Might just 
as well ue Python (since it is like pseudo code) and at least see some 
results.

It also reminds me of a FORTRAN course I was asked to teach. The 
students spent the first morning learning how to write expressions (e.g. 
operators and precedence). They had no contetxt for why they would do 
that or what a FORTRAN program looked like. As soon at I could I rewrote 
the entire course, starting them with a program that read 2 numbers, 
added them and printed the result. In those days students sat at 
terminals, edited program files, submitted them to the resident HP 3000 
computer and shortly received printouts.

-- 
Bob Gailer
919-636-4239
Chapel Hill NC

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