Les Schaffer: ``i am retooling some Fortran code i wrote 20 years ago, and i am surprised how easy it was for me to get back into it. and i think the reason is that Fortran is a pretty basic language, as you say, so multiplying and dividing numbers (its an astro numerical simulation) is very easy.''
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I kept my notebooks from the Fortran class, and still have my final project somewhere. It was the, `given (A,B,C) solve the quadratic for real and complex roots' problem.
Your mention of an astro numerical simulation reminds me of a story that a buddy who works at the Cal Tech radio array told me. They used a giant software system based on Fortran routines to do their statistics and decided to upgrade the software system sometime back in the Clinton-Monica 90s. Clinton was on tv giving his ``I did not have sexual relations ...'' speech when we were having this conversation.
Dave had left school before OO-languages and programming became law. So he had a supreme moment of tech shock when the software contractor did a presentation on the new system, based on C. Now these guys were all PhDs in physics and math. It was really funny to hear, because I had the same reaction several years earlier. (Obviously at a much lower level)
Anyway, Andy suggested a book on C that I'll try to dig up. I still have hopes of getting the FreeBSD drive back up.
What you say about lack of expression, reminds me of my Fortran instructor who made us meticulously document each variable, each loop, each subroutine, etc.
The comparison of LaTeX to TeX was just a user complaint. The way these are pre-packaged for the XP is annoying (TeXnicCenter). The macros for page layout in the download I got, won't accept modification to the Document types. Pick one and use it, period.
I sort of understand why your CS friends claim Java is a good teaching language. I have friend who swears by it too. Trouble is I don't get to see him much.
What I think they are doing is using it to teach the beginning concepts. They are making Java look and feel something like Basic or Pascal or maybe a structured C. Meanwhile they get to introduce the object oriented concepts of programming and what I call a modular approach. I can see why for other reasons, like using an html file in a browser to call a java applet. So their students get to use a GUI. They learn how their web page animations and widgets work. It was neat for those. I only started the book (189 out of 945p).
My problem was that I got introduced to structured programming in the cold war, military mind top-down school, with card readers as input. The most important CS tool was a shoe box to carry the card stack. Then I used a teletype terminal, then a dumb terminal and command line environment as input. That whole world is in the Smithsonian. (`79-82)
A few years later after OO programming was law, PCs were everywhere, I tried to pick up with Pascal... So I had the same tech shock that my buddy at Cal Tech had -- only about a few years earlier. Here's a wiki that describes the history and changing mind set at the time (`89-92):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal
If you read this link, you will find an example of why M$uck is evil. Microsoft controlled and limited the commercial programming environment and essential tools like compliers to keep users out of the hobby of messing with their OS and applications. If anybody wanted to develop their own toys, then they had to pay for every step and upgrade along the way. Embrace and extend, embrace and extend, ... until it's broken . .. then issue patch after patch ... until its broken for good. For people who don't want read the whole article, scroll down to `Windows versions' and carry on from there. It sums up the fate of Pascal.
Reading further into Delphi, it looks like Pascal morphed into some kind of droid in the code wars of iPods and cell phones, i.e. java territory(?), ...
[It would be really interesting to know what the military uses as a platform to run their killer drones and battlefield robots Anybody know, please put up a post. I sort of understand the engineering issues from power wheelchair and mechanized seating systems controllers. These use custom manufactured central processors from Motorola. Just checking Motorola I find the rugged cop friendly laptop ML910. And it comes with Vista ...]
After another break, I started up again with freebsd and a little C in a unix environment (`98). My son who was going to UCSF by this time (he had just entered high school during the Pascal era) got me into the unix world. So it was on the bsd box that I installed a java environment and started to play with that (`05).
I have to get my bsd drive working again. It was really good for a programming environment, because it was engineered for it---or at least it was until the freebsd crowd tweaked it a few times too many.
It might not be them, thinking about it. It might be the hardware market wars driving this constant OS market wars. It's nice to know msuck's Vista took a face plant.
The bsd box was were I could do as suggested. Play with Python to wrap something in C. The compilers, libraries, etc come as packaged downloads through the ports directory.
CG