des@orenda.amara.uucp (Dave Steinhoff) (10/14/89)
I am submitting this on behalf of another person at my company, Uwe Pleban, with whom I attended OOPSLA '89 in New Orleans. These are remarks concerning the Advanced C++ tutorial taught by Dr's. Wiener and Pinson. The format below follows that of the tutorial feedback form distributed to the tutorial attendees. -------------------------------------------------- General Remarks --------------- I have taught for more than 10 years at the university level, have taught tutorials myself, and have been to several tutorials in the past 3 years. I have had a number of bad "being taught" experiences in my life, but none can compare to this tutorial. Anything above abysmal would be unwarranted. I feel that my company was cheated out of $260 for a completely worthless and distasteful experience. Where do we write to get our money back? Below are more specific comments. Re: 2. Content -------------- The tutorial was at the intermediate level at best. Indeed, after about one hour, one of the participants asked "Why are we going through all this preliminary stuff?" The answer "to establish terminology" was a bit absurd. At most 15 minutes would have sufficed to do exactly that. The organization of the tutorial notes was incredibly poor. It reminded me of a saying of one of my Math professors that "Math is usually taught by hopping from lemma to lemma." The authors hopped from boring subsection to boring subsection, with each subsection of the form - syntactic/semantic/pragmatic rule for C++ - sample class(es) - sample main program - sample test output (although with some examples, the test output was deleted or shortened, and it was no longer clear whether it was actual output, or simply wishful thinking). This is a rather inane way of presenting material to reasonably intelligent beings. There was no discussion of concepts, at least not in the notes. After the first 90 minutes, I had worked through most of the notes myself, while the lecturers droned on at a snail's pace. I then decided that the tutorial was a complete waste of my time, because nothing of conceptual interest seemed to be part of the tutorial, and there is considerably better material available in bookstores, such as the book by Lippman. The major shortcoming of the tutorial was that it provided absolutely no guidance concerning the use of C++ for software construction. Since the language is large, has redundant features, and embodies OOP concepts in a unique way, an advanced tutorial should have focussed on what to do and what not to do when using the language. How do you use certain features to organize class libraries? How do you ensure reusability? What is considered dangerous? What about portability? Instead, in his opening remarks, one of the speakers talked about irrelevant efficiency issues at the microscopic level. The material was not developed for this tutorial, but rather cut and pasted together from another two day course on C++. The speakers spent some time explaining why sections 1, 2, and 8 were missing from the notes; that they had problems with the printers, who kept asking for missing sections, etc. This illustrated "code reuse" at its worst. One of the most irritating "features" of the materials was that all examples were tested with the alpha-version of the AT&T cfront V2.0 translator. Consequently, there were numerous remarks by the speakers to change examples, ignore commentary concerning erroneous constructions, etc. My favorite example concerns the main program on page 54, which we were told to safely ignore, because all the erroneous constructs were no longer erroneous with the final version of the translator. Why was the material not brought up-to-date for the tutorial? The examples were tested in June of this year, and the tutorial was in October! Re: 4. Presentation ------------------- Neither speaker was effective. Dr. Pinson spoke in a monotonous voice, which could barely be heard over the hum of the central air system. He seemd to be very insecure concerning C++ language features, and repeatedly passed questions on to Dr. Wiener. Dr. Pinson seemed to be easily rattled by any question which did not directly refer to material he had just presented. Dr. Wiener was clearly the better speaker, but with the poorly organized material, even Jesse Jackson could not have saved the day! Visual materials? What visual materials? I cannot understand why there were no overhead transparencies. The explanation that this would eliminate "the shuffling of plastic slides in response to questions" is a bit absurd. Instead, the style of presentation often reduced to "as you can see on line 6 of listing 3.8 on page 43, which reads ...". How boring can you get? Re: 5. Details -------------- Best feature: I now know that I do not have to bother looking at any of the Wiener/Pinson books concerning OOP/Smalltalk/C++. Did I get my money's worth? Absolutely not! I feel very strongly about getting a partial reimbursement for the fee, which is exorbitant for such a poorly executed tutorial. Feedback for the tutorials committee: Get together with the speakers and "test drive" them. That should eliminate substandard performances such as the one by Wiener and Pinson. Uwe Pleban, Ph.D. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Steinhoff Applied Dynamics International des@amara.UUCP 3800 Stone School Rd. ...uunet!amara!des Ann Arbor, Mi 48108 -------------------------------------(313)973-1300-----------------
sdl@mitre.org (Steven D. Litvintchouk) (10/16/89)
> I have taught for more than 10 years at the university level, have > taught tutorials myself, and have been to several tutorials in the > past 3 years. I have had a number of bad "being taught" experiences > in my life, but none can compare to this tutorial. Anything above > abysmal would be unwarranted. I feel that my company was cheated out > of $260 for a completely worthless and distasteful experience.... That makes (at least) two years in a row that OOPSLA gave bad tutorials on C++. In fact, having read your review of the Weiner/Pinson tutorial at OOPSLA '89, I maintain that the C++ tutorial given at OOPSLA '88 was even worse! The OOPSLA '88 tutorial on C++ (taught by Adrienne Dockrell) contained practically no examples of C++ code whatsoever! In fact, Ms. Dockrell never explained 99% of the specific features of C++ ! Additionally, Ms. Dockrell had just flown in that morning, and she had obviously had no sleep for perhaps 24 hours. You can imagine how she sounded. She meandered on in vague generalities. Nothing resembling a complete C++ program (or even a complete C++ class definition) was ever presented. Given the importance of C++, future OOPSLAs had better do a better job teaching it.... Steven Litvintchouk MITRE Corporation Burlington Road Bedford, MA 01730 Fone: (617)271-7753 ARPA: sdl@mitre-bedford.arpa UUCP: ...{att,decvax,genrad,ll-xn,philabs,utzoo}!linus!sdl "Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to conquer the world." -- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp. -- Steven Litvintchouk MITRE Corporation Burlington Road Bedford, MA 01730 Fone: (617)271-7753 ARPA: sdl@mitre-bedford.arpa UUCP: ...{att,decvax,genrad,ll-xn,philabs,utzoo}!linus!sdl "Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to conquer the world." -- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.
lisch@mentor.com (Ray Lischner) (10/16/89)
In message <DES.89Oct13171155@orenda.amara.uucp>, Dr. Uwe Pleban comments on the Wiener/Pinson Tutorial on C++ at OOPSLA'89. I was not there and cannot comment, but I did attend a workshop in September on "Advanced C++ Programming", taught by Jonathan Shopiro, of AT&T Bell Laboratories, at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference. The purpose of the workshop was slightly different: it was more to introduce an experienced C++ programmer to 2.0 features, rather than focusing on OOP in C++. Jonathan presented the material clearly and effectively, answering all of the questions I had about 2.0, its new features, and its differences from 1.2. The workshop included examples (many of which were taken from the iostream and task libraries, so they were real 2.0 examples) of useful ways of dealing with C++, e.g., controlling the order of static initializers, using multiple inheritance, and creating, using, and writing applicators and manipulators. I thought it was an excellent workshop, well worth the $135 my employer paid. I highly recommend checking out the PNW Software Quality Conference workshops in the future. (Next year's will be the last weekend in October, 1990.) -- UUCP: uunet!sequent!mntgfx!lisch
reggie@dinsdale.nm.paradyne.com (George W. Leach) (10/17/89)
In article <SDL.89Oct15162018@linus.mitre.org> sdl@mitre.org (Steven D. Litvintchouk) writes: >That makes (at least) two years in a row that OOPSLA gave bad >tutorials on C++. In fact, having read your review of the >Weiner/Pinson tutorial at OOPSLA '89, I maintain that the C++ tutorial >given at OOPSLA '88 was even worse! Although I didn't take any C++ tutorials at the time, I was not impressed by a couple of tutorials I took at OOPSLA'87 in Orlando. >The OOPSLA '88 tutorial on C++ (taught by Adrienne Dockrell) contained >practically no examples of C++ code whatsoever! In fact, Ms. Dockrell >never explained 99% of the specific features of C++ ! If you are looking for a good introductory level tutorial on C++, I would recommend Rob Murray's tutorial that is given at the semi-annual USENIX Conferences. In addition, Rob teaches his tutorial at other C++ events as well, eg. C++ at WORK -'89 in Boston next month. >Given the importance of C++, future OOPSLAs had better do a better job >teaching it.... Actually, you could say this about other topics as well at OOPSLA. It is a sad fact that there are people out there who are trying to capitalize on a popular theme by teaching tutorials or running seminars without adequate preparation. But then again, isn't that the American Way :-) Let the buyer beware. George W. Leach AT&T Paradyne (uunet|att)!pdn!reggie Mail stop LG-133 Phone: 1-813-530-2376 P.O. Box 2826 FAX: 1-813-530-8224 Largo, FL 34649-2826 USA
mitchell@community-chest.uucp (George Mitchell) (10/19/89)
I second the recommendation of the Rob Murray C++ tutorial. He presented "An Introduction to C++" at OOPSLA '89 and it was a most remarkable contrast to Wiener/Pinson. -- /s/ George vmail: 703/883-6029 email: mitchell@community-chest.mitre.org [alt: gmitchel@mitre.arpa] snail: GB Mitchell, MITRE, MS Z676, 7525 Colshire Dr, McLean, VA 22102
mlm@odi.com (Mitchell Model) (10/24/89)
Actually, you could say this about other topics as well at OOPSLA. > It is a sad fact that there are people out there who are trying to > capitalize on a popular theme by teaching tutorials or running seminars > without adequate preparation. But then again, isn't that the American > Way :-) I know there have been a lot of poor tutorials at OOPSLA conferences, and I don't want to defend them. However, people should be aware that due to ACM policy restrictions, tutorial speakers "capitalize" to the extent of (at least at OOPSLA '88 rates) $400 per half day tutorial, airfare, and the cost of a room for one night. Such rates don't provide much motivation for preparation, though there are of course other motivations. Your money, therefore, goes to the ACM, which undoubtedly loves the OOPSLA conference. It might simply be that people are getting what the ACM pays for, rather than what they deserve. When I think of all the forces and factors over the years that have futhered the development and propagation of object technology the ACM does not come immediately to mind. Proposal: let's start an independent society for object technology (if someone can think of a non-silly name) and create a proper home for OOPSLA, tutorials, journals, and other such activities. The Artificial Intelligence Society could serve as a model. -- Mitchell L Model Object Design, Inc. Director, HeadStart Program 1 New England Executive Park Burlington MA 01803 mlm@odi.com, odi!mlm@uunet.uu.net (617) 270-9797