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From: perelgut@utcsrgv.UUCP (Stephen Perelgut)
Newsgroups: net.micro,net.research,net.cse
Subject: Re: First Summary of PC's in Education Survey
Message-ID: <3475@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Mar-84 21:32:31 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.3475
Posted: Wed Mar  7 21:32:31 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Mar-84 22:17:17 EST
References: <3604@utzoo.UUCP>, <3466@utcsrgv.UUCP>, <3611@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto
Lines: 43

.
I don't want too many people to think I am a promoter of outdated
technology or something.  So let me say a few more things in my own
defence.

1) I advocate 8088 based technology because it is there.  The reason I
    don't advocate MS-BASIC is that we can do better now.  Following Henry's
    argument, I would design my teaching environment based on a 16032 with
    all 7 M's.  However:    it isn't available in any quantity
			    it isn't tested (and no university is going to buy
				a pig in a poke no matter how pretty it is.)
			    it would cost both arms, one leg, and the other leg
				up to the second joint
2) I advocate IBM PC's because they are here, they have upper management
    support, and we have one to play with NOW.  Not next week or next year
    or whenever.
3) I realize that 16-bits isn't enough to write the worlds largest programs,
    but I seriously doubt any student will suffer from the "limitation" in a
    first computer course.
4) "Animated algorithms" may be the wave of the future, but there is no 
    support here, now.  Would anyone recommend that we wait until the future is
    here?  I would rather do something than sit and wait for something better.
    There is always something better on the horizon.  After the 68000's are the
    16000's.  And then the next generations.  Etc.  I don't wanna wait.  I want
    to start conversion now.
5) The U. of T. is grossly underfunded.  When there is a commitment to pursue
    some project, turning it down is suicide.  If we look too far into the
    future, we will miss the present boat.

In spite of all that, I sympathize with Mark Mendell (who got stuck with the
8086 coder when I became too busy.  Just goes to show you what happens when
you're the best, and Mark is!  So he got stuck!)  I would love to use 68000's,
but I don't have one, let alone the 15-20 we need.  Anyone wanna give a gift
to a worthy university.  We even have means for giving out U.S. tax
certificates.  And we implement top-quality compilers in under a man-year.
(3 months for a production Turing compiler developed by 3 people, about
2 man-months for Turing/68000 when we go that route.)  And Turing is
complete, verifiable, and FAST (compile-time AND run-time.)
-- 
Stephen Perelgut   
	    Computer Systems Research Group    University of Toronto
	    Usenet:	{linus, ihnp4, allegra, decvax, floyd}!utcsrgv!perelgut
	    CSNET:	perelgut@Toronto