billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe,2847,) (08/09/89)
From article <5595@ficc.uu.net>, by peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva): >> OK; let's imagine. Student gets syntax error. [...] Student >> shows the program to the local Consultant [who] points out >> the obvious error. > > Ever been a consultant at a university comp center? I have. The next > stage, if the student is working in Fortran, C, or some other production > language (ADA wasn't around back then), is... % % Student comes back in 10 minutes with the same error. % or... % Consultant spends 10 minutes explaining error to student, and % maybe fails. Meanwhile 6 other students get tired of waiting... Yes, I've been a consultant (Purdue University Computing Center); however, I seem to have had a much easier time getting the explanation across. "Abstraction is the fundamental mechanism by which the computer scientist can combat complexity"; I would much rather consult for Ada than for a language in which it's not possible to show the student how to use abstraction to improve the probability that the software can be built without errors. Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu
scott@bbxeng.UUCP (Engineering) (08/11/89)
I was a consultant in the computer center at my college for about
a year. Boy, could I tell you some stories! The truth of the matter
is that many of the students cannot, and will never, understand programming.
My lab hours involved primarily beginning FORTRAN classes and advanced
assembler classes. Some FORTRAN students were *never* able to understand the
connection between a READ statement and a FORMAT statement - too abstract.
I usually tried to explain things to a student when I was asked for help
with an assignment. I normally wouldn't just give the answer. However,
some students were better off just getting the answer. (Actually they
would be better off dropping their classes).
One of my favorite stories:
It was at the end of the semester. All of the students were desparately
trying to complete all of their programming assignments. It was sooooo
busy that I elected to run a closed shop that night (normally, students
ran their own jobs). The card reader jams. The hopper is *full* of
FORTRAN jobs which I must remove to clear the jam. I grab the entire
stack in my hand and gently remove it from the hopper...and...oops!...
the cards go all over the floor. FORTRAN students watch in horror as
I try to gather up the cards off the floor. Fortunately, the cards
tended to stay in clumps and I was able to put the whole thing back
together - except *one* card. I just couldn't figure out where that
one card belonged. It said:
I=I+1
Oh well, I figured somebody's loop wouldn't work and that would be
that. Nobody complained!
Another time, the line printer had been acting up a lot. I was constantly
having to lift up the cover and adjust the paper and ribbon (one of those
old IBM printers with a 14" wide ribbon). Practically every time I had to
do this there was this *thick* COBOL deck sitting on the printer which I
would have to move elsewhere. I finally asked the owner of the COBOL
program not to keep putting his deck on top of the printer because it
might be knocked to the floor by accident. A little while later I heard
a student call to me, "The printer's jammin' again". I rushed into the
room and threw open the printer cover and....COBOL cards went flying.
I swear it was an accident but I really enjoyed it.
Do any of you lab-assistants and ex-lab-assistants out there have
have some good stories to share? Maybe start a thread in some other
group?
--
------------------------------------------------------
Scott Amspoker
Basis International
505-345-5232peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (08/18/89)
In article <166@bbxeng.UUCP>, scott@bbxeng.UUCP (Engineering) writes: > Do any of you lab-assistants and ex-lab-assistants out there have > have some good stories to share? Maybe start a thread in some other > group? My favorite was the business administration student who came up to me and said "Basic isn't working". I walk up to his terminal and it said, approximately: EECS 11/70 UNIX System ;login: cs100ab Password: <motd> Erase set to ^H, Kill set to ^X. % 10 LET A = 0 10: Command not found % -- Peter da Silva, *NIX support guy @ Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Biz: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Fun: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-' "Optimization is not some mystical state of grace, it is an intricate act U of human labor which carries real costs and real risks." -- Tom Neff
ck@voa3.UUCP (Chris Kern) (08/19/89)
In article <5778@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >My favorite [lab assistant story] was the business administration >student who came up to me and said "Basic isn't working". [He was typing BASIC statements into his command interpreter (shell).] Thus has it been since the Dawn of BASIC. This type of "problem" was not uncommon when I first started programming in BASIC at Dartmouth in 1965 (although, naturally, I don't remember ever being guilty of such a solecism myself). A self-contained programming environment tends to encourage this kind of confusion. Perhaps one answer to the perennial question about "which language to teach first" is that, whatever it is, the translator ought not to insulate the user too much from the rest of the system. There is something to be said for edit-compile-bind-run: it makes the the point early that a language translator is just another application program. I don't suppose this is a problem for the average CS major, no matter how inexperienced. But there are plenty of computer users -- including many who like to write their own programs -- who have a very dim understanding of the environment provided by their systems. -- Chris Kern Voice of America, Washington, D.C. ...uunet!voa3!ck +1 202-485-7020
jeff@aiai.uucp (Jeff Dalton) (08/21/89)
In article <211@voa3.UUCP> ck@voa3.UUCP (Chris Kern) writes: >[He was typing BASIC statements into his command interpreter (shell).] > >Thus has it been since the Dawn of BASIC. This type of "problem" was >not uncommon when I first started programming in BASIC at Dartmouth in >1965 (although, naturally, I don't remember ever being guilty of such a >solecism myself). When I was at Dartmouth in the 70's, line number based editing was implemented by the shell (more or less), and all of the compilers could handle files that had line numbers. (Only Basic let you use the numbers as statement labels, though.) So it was very easy to create a file or edit one, without having to learn a lot of editing commands. And the line numbers could be stripped off if you didn't want to keep them. -- Jeff
roelof@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (R. Vuurboom) (08/21/89)
In article <211@voa3.UUCP> ck@voa3.UUCP (Chris Kern) writes: >In article <5778@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >>My favorite [lab assistant story] was the business administration >>student who came up to me and said "Basic isn't working". >[He was typing BASIC statements into his command interpreter (shell).] > >Thus has it been since the Dawn of BASIC. This type of "problem" was >not uncommon when I first started programming in BASIC at Dartmouth in >1965 (although, naturally, I don't remember ever being guilty of such a >solecism myself). > I do. You jogged my memory of my very very first "major" (:-) program: solving simultaneous equations. The program (in fortran) had a body something like this: x + 2*y = 3 2*x + y = 4 I was getting some mysterious compile errors. A trip to the assistent and I discovered that you could only have one variable on the left hand side of the = sign. Cursing fortran for its obvious senility it was a quick step to put things right: x = 3 - 2*y x = 2 - y/2 ...some FORmula TRANslator :-) -- I don't know what the question means, but the answer is yes... KLM - Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij => coneenclicker lughtfart matscarpie Roelof Vuurboom SSP/V3 Philips TDS Apeldoorn, The Netherlands +31 55 432226 domain: roelof@idca.tds.philips.nl uucp: ...!mcvax!philapd!roelof
hjm@cernvax.UUCP (Hubert Matthews) (08/23/89)
One of my favourite stories is this one:
A poor forlorn young girl was trying to learn FORTRAN. She had great
difficulty with the conceptual difference twixt integer and floating
point variables. In FORTRAN, the square-root function takes an FP
argument and an integer won't do. So, she changed all of the lines
saying:
I = SQRT(131)
to
I = SQRT(131.0)
So far so good. She returned to ask me why this line didn't work:
J = SQRT(N)
I pointed out that N was an integer, just like 131. She then changed
the line to this!
J = SQRT(N.0)
Some people just weren't born to be programmers...
(I hope that's somewhat more amusing than the
D0 10 I = 1, 10
or the
IF (A .EQ. B) THEN I = I + 1
stories.)
--
Hubert Matthews ...helping make the world a quote-free zone...
hjm@cernvax.cern.ch hjm@vxomeg.decnet.cern.ch ...!mcvax!cernvax!hjm