From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [50.116.15.146]) by inbox.vuxu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5E261217D7 for ; Tue, 1 Oct 2024 17:20:40 +0200 (CEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B5D6F437B0; Wed, 2 Oct 2024 01:20:36 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D14D5437AC for ; Wed, 2 Oct 2024 01:20:33 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 45D3B35E90E; Tue, 1 Oct 2024 08:20:33 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2024 08:20:33 -0700 From: Larry McVoy To: Dan Cross Message-ID: <20241001152033.GH13777@mcvoy.com> References: <20240928165812.4uyturluj4dsuwef@illithid> <20240928180138.aygrwqdwrvq3n6xt@illithid> <202410011313.491DD4ac421643@freefriends.org> <20241001133231.GE13777@mcvoy.com> <202410011347.491DlAsJ423777@freefriends.org> <20241001140101.GG13777@mcvoy.com> <024bd803-2852-c0d0-5f15-30ec65c45cb4@makerlisp.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Message-ID-Hash: AT7TJRHSYM5H2O5GA7PB3UDF5I4TSCE2 X-Message-ID-Hash: AT7TJRHSYM5H2O5GA7PB3UDF5I4TSCE2 X-MailFrom: lm@mcvoy.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: Luther Johnson , tuhs@tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Minimum Array Sizes in 16 bit C (was Maximum) List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Tue, Oct 01, 2024 at 10:56:13AM -0400, Dan Cross wrote: > On Tue, Oct 1, 2024 at 10:32???AM Luther Johnson > wrote: > > I think because the of the orders of magnitude increase in the demand > > for programmers, we now have a very large number of programmers with > > little or no math and science (and computer science doesn't count in the > > point I'm trying to make here, if that's your only science, you're not > > going to have the models in your head from other disciplines to give you > > useful analogs) background, and that's a big change from 40 years ago. > > So that has had an effect on who is programming, how they think about > > it, and how languages have been marketed to that programming audience. IMHO. > > I've found a grounding in mathematics useful for programming, but > beyond some knowledge of the physical constraints that the universe > places on us and a very healthy appreciation for the scientific > method, I'm having a hard time understanding how the hard sciences > would help out too much. Electrical engineering seems like it would be > more useful, than, say, chemistry or geology. > > I talk to a lot of academics, and I think they see the situation > differently than is presented here. In a nutshell, the way a lot of > them look at it, the amount of computer science in the world increases > constantly while the amount of time they have to teach that to > undergraduates remains fixed. As a result, they have to pick and > choose what they teach very, very carefully, balancing a number of > criteria as they do so. What this translates to in the real world > isn't that the bar is lowered, but that the bar is different. I really wish that they made students take something like the PDP-11 assembly class - it was really systems architecture, you learned the basic idea of a computer: a CPU, a bus to talk to memory, a bus to talk to I/O, how a stack works, ideally how a context switch works though that kinda blows minds (I personally don't think you are a kernel programmer if you haven't implemented swtch() or at least walked the code and understood all of it). I did all that and developed a mental model of all computers that has helped me over the last 4 decades. Yes, my model is overly simplistic but it still works, even on the x86 craziness. I don't know how you could get to that mental model with x86, x86 is too weird. I don't really know which architecture is close to the simplicity of a PDP-11 today. Anyone? If I were teaching it, I'd just get a PDP-11 simulator and teach on that. Maybe. -- --- Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat