Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 17:28:08 +0000 From: Mike Doyle <relyod@cooperationireland.org> To: Darren Henderson <darren@nighttide.net> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Looking for Yoda Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.20010312172808.0081ea50@199.107.2.1> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.30.0103111438550.22814-100000@localhost> References: <v04220805b6d1796cec93@[194.78.241.123]>
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At 15:06 11/03/01 -0500, Darren Henderson <darren@nighttide.net> wrote: > >One of the common misconceptions I've seen from non-programmers is that >"knowing" a language is the same as knowing how to program. Its exactly >backwards. > >Once you know how to program, are comfortable with algorithms, problem >solving, breaking projects down to their constituant parts, know about >basic efficiencies, know a little about things like queing theory etc etc, >you are on your way. I just wanted to say that this is possibly the wisest thing said in the whole thread. When I learned programming as part of a CS Degree we had to come up with a type of formalised pseudocode before starting to program in any "implementation language" as our instructor referred to them. By the time I was a graduate student and taking the tutorials on that course, it was even more formalised (using formal derivation methods). I still think this was a great teaching tool - and while few people I know would write a formal specification in predicate logic for an entire system, the discipline of knowing the formalised pre- and post- conditions for code fragments makes it much saner designing functions and/or objects. What language you implement your code in is irrelevant. Any computable program can be proven to be implementable in a language with 3 instructions/functionally equivalent to a Turing machine. Of course, no-one would ever want to re-read your code... That's what high level languages are FOR... and some are better suited to certain tasks than others. At the moment, far removed from the university environment, I use mostly PERL, PHP, MS VBA (under protest), SQL embedded into all the above, and HTML (if you could call it a language). In college I learned and/or taught C, C++, Pascal, Fortran, Lisp the only one that stands out there is Lisp cause it's functional and not procedural. Once you know one language you pretty much know them all especially if it comes with a good, on-line HTML documentation set. <>< ============================================================= ><> Michael Doyle email: relyod@cooperationireland.org Network Administrator personal email: relyod@indigo.ie Co-operation Ireland http://www.cooperationireland.org/ Phone: +353-1-661 0588 Fax: +353-1-661 8456 ********************************************************************* To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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