[OT] partialy I was wondering what suggestions for programing

[Leo J Mauler]

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 11:17:18 -0500 Bryan Richard <bryan at booknerd.net>
writes:
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 09:58:08AM -0600, DCT Jared wrote:
> > On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 04:01:25 -0800, Kendrick-LUG wrote:
> > > I never saw a specific book on
> > > fundamentals of programingl.
> > 
> > I can't imagine one exists. How can you teach fundamentals
> > of programming without examples? And if you're going to use
> > examples, why give examples from a dozen languages?
> 
> You don't. You use English as the high-level language. 

Ahhh.  That would have been the less confusing way of saying it.  :)
 
> Donald Knuth's THE ART OF COMPUTER 
> PROGRAMMING uses this technique whenever 
> possible.  http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/
> 
> Still...
> 
> > Therefore,
> > 
> > Fundamentals of programming books will be like you described,
> > fundamentals of C, or fundamentals of Assembler. Pick one
> > and go.
> 
> I agree with this logic. You learn programming by programming not 
> my reading.

Regardless of your choice of High Level Language, be it C, Assembler,
Pascal, or ENGLISH.

Even ENGLISH "programs" can be tested and debugged.
 
> > All languages are basically alike; they implement the same ideas
> > with variously flavored methods. 
> 
> Until you encounter LISP and your head melts. ;-)

"Do Not Feed The LISP Programmers"

I mentioned this previously in a different post, I have to flesh it out. 
A friend of mine in high school had a father who was a Computer Science
professor at the University of Kansas.  They had a home computer
(mid-to-late1980s) which ran ONLY LISP.  His son complained that he would
prefer a computer like his friends were getting (IBM PC or Macintosh) so
he could run spreadsheets on them (Advanced Physics coursework, like
using real data from a metal ball shot out of a spring gun to "prove"
various Physics "laws") and do his homework a little easier.

So his dad went to work, and wrote a Spreadsheet Application in LISP for
their home computer, with almost all the functions of Lotus 1-2-3 (for
the younger folks, one of the better Spreadsheets in MSDOS).

I still cringe a bit thinking about trying to write *any* office
productivity application in LISP (even as minor  as a calculator), let
alone creating an entire spreadsheet.

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