brownell@harvard.ARPA (Dave Brownell) (06/23/84)
-=<*>=- >> About the rest of the flame ... just HOW do you claim to know >> more about the course than the people who taught it? > Were you there five years ago when I took AMS11? Sorry, I was unclear. You were saying a lot of things that were half true about the course I was involved with; that's the course I was talking about. I got pretty angry at that, since you made it sound like a third grade imitation of MIT. It was not. Even if I too have made it sound that way. I didn't say anything about the summer school except that it is not really the equivalent of the term-time course. It is much shorter, and leaves out material that I think is very significant. I think that the material omitted is what you found lacking. > To understand quantum mechanics you have to understand a lot of > background material. To understand many important fundamental computer > science concepts, you don't. Depends what kind of background you're talking about, and who is learning. In particular, if nobody has tried solving a problem before, they don't appreciate different solution technique. And those differences are central to understanding the techniques. Object oriented programming is a technique; abstraction is a concept. Abstraction can be taught without object oriented programming. Dave Brownell {allegra,floyd,ihnp4,seismo}!harvard!brownell