[TUHS] Re: Minimum Array Sizes in 16 bit C (was Maximum)

[Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Oct 1, 2024 at 10:32 AM Luther Johnson
<luther.johnson@makerlisp.com> 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.

        - Dan C.