[Coco] dumb profs wasRe: trig.h

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 7:07 AM, Steven Hirsch <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2011, Willard Goosey wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 06:34:42PM -0500, Steven Hirsch wrote:
>>
>>> University of Vermont (my alma-mater) dropped Assembly Language and
>>> Machine Organization as a required course in the CS curriculum.  Just
>>> incredible.
>>
>> Yeah, that's pretty mind-blowing.  It's all object-this and abstract
>> that.  But eventually, at the bottom of all those layers of code, the
>> machine is still "load a register."  "add 1."  "store register."
>
> As I said, it has begotten 50MB binaries that require 1GB of memory to run
> and execute like a snail even at that.  Before being turned loose on the
> world to code The Next Big App, all new CS grads should be exposed to
> something like, e.g. WordStar running on a 48k Z80 machine and asked to
> think about it for a moment.
>
> Steve

I've said before and still believe that a study of OS9 or even FLEX or
CPM, some OS designed for the 8 bit machines would be eye opening and
very beneficial to new CS students.  You can fit these systems in your
head, something basically impossible with modern operating systems.
Without ever understanding any computer system from the bottom up, I
don't think a new programmer has a foundation for making good choices
at the upper layers of abstraction where we play today.