On Sun, 08 Mar 2020 07:30:55 GMT, Jan Panteltje 
declaimed the following:

>
>
>So if you think you know programming after those 2 weeks...
>the BASICS (not BASIC) may be simple.. but that is where the really
interesting thing starts.
>
 No... Learning the syntax of any language does not teach
"programming"...

 Language independent courses on data structures and algorithms (perhaps
using pseudo-code) are more important than knowing the differences between
F77 and F95.

 I'm likely dating myself with this list:

Structured Programming (Linger/Mills/Witt; 1979 Addison-Wesley)
Data Structure and Management 2nd ed (Flores, 1977 Prentice-Hall)
Data Structures and Program Design (Kruse, 1984 Prentice-Hall)
The Programming Language Landscape (Ledgard/Marcotty, 1981 SRA)

>
>But OK, BASIC can be learned in a flash, and you can do A LOT with it.
>And then you still will have to KNOW what you babble about in that language,
>being able to speak a language does NOT make you a great novel writer.
>Tehre is a lot of babble going on bars etc...
>

 The instructor of my data structures course made the mistake of saying
we could use any of the languages available on the campus mainframe that he
could read (so, no APL ). I chose Xerox Sigma BASIC -- which only
allowed for four open files at a time... The assignment:

 A Hashed-Head, Multiply-Linked List phone number directory application.
It just fit in the four file limit, and I used the a CHAIN LINK command to
overlay the major functional modules -- the main module just handled the
menu from which one selected an operation (look-up, edit, list all, etc.)

 Don't recall if anyone used COBOL for it... Think one masochist did it
in meta-symbol. Instructor probably expected most to use FORTRAN-IV.

{The HHMLL based upon the Flores text. The only other place I've seen one
used is in the file system of the Commodore Amiga}


--
 Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
 wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05