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From: Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2025 08:18:26 -0300
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Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:

> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>> In article <vpo4uc$2omvt$1@dont-email.me>, Rich  <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
>>>I had (if memory serves) at least one Pascal class, one Fortran class, 
>>>and an assembler (CDC Cyber 7000 - a really weird CPU on the inside) 
>>>class, all required classes for Engineering.  Pascal class was trivial 
>>>(had already done plenty of UCSD Pascal on Apple II in high-school) so 
>>>just had to adjust to the small difference in the CDC Cyber Pascal we 
>>>were using.  Fortran was similarly trivial, but oh did I come to hate 
>>>Fortran in the end.  Just had to learn the "fortranisms", as I already 
>>>understood the over-arching "how to program" aspects.  The assembler 
>>>class was also itself trivial (had done loads of 6502 assembler by this 
>>>point, and some 8086 assembler, provided one considered DOS's debug an 
>>>'assembler' of sorts).  Just had to "learn the language" rather than 
>>>the "how to program" part.
>> 
>> That's pretty unusual.  The reason why Fortran is a good thing is because
>> engineers can't be trusted with pointers.
>
> There might be that.  I was there before the rise of C as the "be all" 
> language, which is how I had the Pascal and Fortran classes.  Five 
> years later and it was all C.
>
>> And COMPASS?  That's a very very strange assembler to teach....
>
> It was the timeshare system the university had for students.  They had 
> a Cyber 7600 and a Cyber 8600, I only ever had accounts on the 7600.  
> But since it was the system they used, Compass (I'd forgotten that 
> name, but that was it) was the assembler.
>
>> I went to gatech which had Cyber machines which the CS folks avoided 
>> like the plague.  COMPASS is not exactly a normal assembler and has a 
>> lot of fast-float-performance craziness...  it is not something I'd 
>> really teach anyone whom I was trying to teach about the principles 
>> of computing or how systems work.
>
> Well, the assembly class did come after two semesters of the other 
> languages, and it did begin by presuming you "knew how to program" in 
> the general sense.  But yes, indeed, a weird CPU and assembler as 
> compared to other microprocessors that I was used to at the time.
>
>> And the PPUs code?  That's worse than IBM channel controller stuff.  
>> I'm sorry you had to do that.  --scott
>
> Thankfully they didn't expect us to make use of the PPU stuff.  They 
> just had us essentially cause an abort and effectively a Cyber core 
> dump and that was what we turned in for our "execution runs", with 
> circles around the hex (or was it octal?) digits in the dump that were 
> the "answers".  I didn't question the "logic" of it, I just turned in 
> what they wanted to see.  And although a 'weird' CPU to program, 
> actually making the code perform whatever the assigned task they wanted 
> wasn't hard, provided one knew how to program in the first place.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but despite all the idiosyncrasy of the tools
and equipment you worked with, I would say---as it seems pretty clear
from your very posts here---that the educational opportunities you got
did their job pretty well.  

And the fact that you had to know how to program is still an unsolved
problem today, not any failure from the institution you were at the
time.  When I look at almost any programming textbook, I see the problem
is still open.  Perhaps the book

  How to Design Programs
  Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, 
  Matthew Flatt and Shriram Krishnamurthi
  MIT Press, 2014, URL https://htdp.org

is the only meaningful candidate to a solution---as far as I have
looked.