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Path: utzoo!linus!vaxine!wjh12!harvard!brownell
From: brownell@harvard.UUCP (Dave Brownell)
Newsgroups: net.lang, net.flame
Subject: Re: Object oriented languages
Message-ID: <271@harvard.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Jun-84 21:41:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: harvard.271
Posted: Fri Jun 15 21:41:31 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 19-Jun-84 01:10:37 EDT
References: <2115@mit-eddie.UUCP>, <268@harvard.UUCP>
Organization: Sequoia Systems Inc., Marlborough Mass.
Lines: 42

[MIT attacks Harvard ... a counterattack !!!  a left!!!  ... a CDR ???]

>> From kevin@harvard.ARPA
>> Date: Tue, 12-Jun-84 14:24:17 EDT
>>	I do not believe that the advantages of teaching SCHEME outweigh
>>	the need for more resources or the fact that the other courses
>>	here (and the jobs that the students want the experience for)
>>	use more traditional languages (like C).

> From: nessus@mit-eddie.ARPA
> Date: Wed, 13-Jun-84 21:33:37 EDT
>	...  You'd think
>	that Harvard, the liberal arts school, would go for the beautiful
>	concepts, while MIT, the technology school, would go for the
>	down-to-earth engineering.  But life is strange.  One of the things that
>	makes MIT such a great school is that there are many people here who
>	realize that beautiful concepts and engineering can complement one
>	another.

It may not have come across in Kevin's original letter, but the course
in question came from MIT.  As Kevin said, machine resources were the
big bottleneck.  I was also a TF for the course; I know.  The reason there
was a machine bottleneck was an implementation of SCHEME that used too
much virtual memory.  (A better implementation foundered on political
sand and lack of support.)

Ruminations about trade schools versus liberal arts schools (bring on
the flames !!!! :-) are interesting, but frankly, "you had to be
there".  Doug did not take any Harvard version of the course in
question.  Summer school didn't count.

I agree that beautiful concepts can complement engineering, but this
time the concepts lost.  Beautiful concepts, as anyone who has worked
in the computer industry can testify, may lose to the reality of
implementation.  On many machines now in existence, object oriented
languages are implemented inefficiently; unless you have money to burn,
they aren't a real option for very large introductory courses.

	Dave Brownell
	Sequoia Systems Inc.
	Maker of Fine Fault Tolerant Systems since 1984 (whee!)
	{cmcl2,floyd,ihnp4,genrad,research,seismo} !harvard!sequoia!brownell