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From: brownell@harvard.ARPA (Dave Brownell)
Newsgroups: net.lang,net.flame
Subject: Re: Re: Languages on fire
Message-ID: <298@harvard.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 22-Jun-84 23:00:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: harvard.298
Posted: Fri Jun 22 23:00:51 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Jun-84 23:46:28 EDT
References: <2159@mit-eddie.UUCP>,<277@harvard.UUCP>,<2228@mit-eddie.UUCP>
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-=<*>=-

>>	About the rest of the flame ... just HOW do you claim to know
>>	more about the course than the people who taught it?

> 	Were you there five years ago when I took AMS11?

Sorry, I was unclear.  You were saying a lot of things that were
half true about the course I was involved with; that's the course
I was talking about.  I got pretty angry at that, since you made
it sound like a third grade imitation of MIT.  It was not.
Even if I too have made it sound that way.

I didn't say anything about the summer school except that it is not
really the equivalent of the term-time course.  It is much shorter,
and leaves out material that I think is very significant.  I think
that the material omitted is what you found lacking.

>	To understand quantum mechanics you have to understand a lot of
>	background material.  To understand many important fundamental computer
>	science concepts, you don't.

Depends what kind of background you're talking about, and who is learning.
In particular, if nobody has tried solving a problem before, they don't
appreciate different solution technique.  And those differences are
central to understanding the techniques.  Object oriented programming
is a technique; abstraction is a concept.  Abstraction can be taught
without object oriented programming.



Dave Brownell
{allegra,floyd,ihnp4,seismo}!harvard!brownell