Xref: utzoo comp.arch:5492 comp.lang.c:11330 comp.lang.fortran:914 comp.lang.ada:1370 comp.lang.pascal:992 comp.lang.modula2:932 sci.math:4203 sci.math.stat:389 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!husc6!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!bzs From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.pascal,comp.lang.modula2,sci.math,sci.math.stat Subject: Re: Floating-Point Indoctrination: Final Lecture Message-ID: <23871@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: 14 Jul 88 22:41:17 GMT References: <59946@sun.uucp> Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci. Lines: 63 In-reply-to: dgh%dgh@Sun.COM's message of 14 Jul 88 20:14:00 GMT From: dgh%dgh@Sun.COM (David Hough) >Over the nearly twenty years since this lecture course was >first presented, the software environment has gradually >deteriorated despite that hardware has improved. The >software deterioration may be attributable to the >establishment of Computer Science as a separate academic >discipline, whose graduates need have little acquaintance >with scientific computation. (oh c'mon, suffer me one comment) I think this is misguided, having spent many years in the scientific computation biz I can assure you that it is not a place where the problem is absent. In fact, in my experience most natural scientists seemed bored and/or suspicious when the problems were broached in conversation. The reaction often was "oh, don't be absurd, of course the machine [language, whatever] takes care of that?! I have work to do and no time for this twaddle (ie. ranting of a computer scientist.)" What is generally absent from places where natural scientists compute is computer scientists. The reasons are several, among them they don't like to be sneered at for using Fortran or whatever isn't in vogue at the moment (and on that count they are often, but not always, correct, they're correct when it doesn't *really* make much any difference, which is often, incorrect when they fail to see that their software problems, eg. trying to manage records, are due to their insistence on trying to do that sort of thing in Fortran, with dozens of overlapping named commons and an I/O model never designed for that sort of thing etc), an all too common arrogance that programming is just busy-work, almost clerical in nature, and is just as well done by a young grad student on stipend rather than paying someone a real salary to concern themselves with the issues and finally a simple and real frustration with a language gap, no argument, a grad student at least can talk physics (eg) with the "customer", a skill the CS person usually is completely lacking. Unfortunately, this only separates the CS blame but does not exonerate it. I would agree, as one involved in CS education, that the curriculum does not adequately cover such issues as precision and accuracy etc. S/he may very well leave with a respect for the issues but probably has little actual knowledge of them. What is this due to? Several things, as David pointed out the separation of fields may have something to do with it. This has led to departments that are often populated with logicians and other people of such a theoretical bent that they have no real ability (and less interest) in teaching something as mundane as floating point precision. Some of that can be traced back to the relative salary levels in Academia vs Industry, there's little to attract someone who can actually do something with a computer into teaching. Also, let's face it, in this fast paced world such mundane issues are boring, who wants to be so unpopular by teaching a course in numerical analysis when they could be teaching networking or window systems or something like that, something the kids have actually heard of and have a hunger for, and the rarity of applied computer scientists exacerbates that (they can usually teach what they want.) Few universities judge the viability of a course based upon its relevance to the subject at hand, head-counts seem so much more objective and reflect tuition dollars so much better... Well, that's my cynical 2c. -Barry Shein, Boston University