wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) (12/03/88)
In article <3395@newton.praxis.co.uk>, mct@praxis.co.uk (Martyn Thomas) writes: > In article <404@ubbpc.UUCP>, wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes: > > The primary "benefit" that I see in your institutions' choice of Algol-68 is > >that you write programs that nobody else can use, and that your students have > >to do extra work learning mainstream languages after they graduate. > > Research at MC-Amsterdam by van der Meulen (if my memory is accurate) > showed that learning Algol 68 greatly reduced the time to learn subsequent > languages, and that if you have to learn more than two languages, starting > with Algol 68 reduced the overall learning time for the other languages by > more than the time taken for Algol 68. I'll post the reference if I can > locate it. > > Martyn Thomas, Praxis plc, 20 Manvers Street, Bath BA1 1PX UK. Please do post it, I would be interested. Although the information will be useless in the United States, since no Algol-68 compilers are available, it is relevant to curricula like MIT, which use Scheme to teach programming. I was recalling my experience when I graduated from MIT proficient only in an Algol-60 variant (AED) and PL/I. After enough unemployment, I decided to stop playing the Glass Bead Game, abandon technological purism, and learn Macro-11 and FORTRAN. I do not wish to restrict academic freedom, and I think institutions of learning should teach their students the best techniques they can devise, but please, please, allow them to learn some techniques they will be able to use after graduation! -- Bill Hutchison, DP Consultant rutgers!liberty!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh Unisys UNIX Portation Center "What one fool can do, another can!" P.O. Box 500, M.S. B121 Ancient Simian Proverb, quoted by Blue Bell, PA 19424 Sylvanus P. Thompson, in _Calculus Made Easy_