Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!iuvax!pur-ee!a.cs.uiuc.edu!p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies From: gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu Newsgroups: comp.edu Subject: Re: CS with Laboratories Message-ID: <82400008@p.cs.uiuc.edu> Date: 5 Jul 88 05:32:00 GMT References: <1018@ndsuvax.UUCP> Lines: 26 Nf-ID: #R:ndsuvax.UUCP:1018:p.cs.uiuc.edu:82400008:000:1411 Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies Jul 5 00:32:00 1988 I disagree with the base note writer. Think back a mere 15 years -- how was computer science taught at the major schools? People submitted card decks to computer operators and picked up their printouts 1/2 an hour later. If you were a grad student at an exceptional department, you could interact with the front panel of a PDP-11. These schools still produced good programmers. The basics necessary for teaching computer science have never been cheaper. Computer hardware DOES NOT obey the economic principals that cause nightmares for Chemistry and Physics departments. Even small schools should have little difficulty affording the equipment to teach compiler techniques, optimization, operating systems, AI, or numerical analysis. However, it may take some curriculum (software) development by an expert professor and some graduate students. Advanced (not Beginning) Computer graphics may be the only area where you'll have problems. Ideally, every student might need a PIXAR machine, or at least a Iris workstation. VLSI and PAL design is another story. These technologies are expensive and state-of-the-art equipment is not getting much cheaper. Maybe we can call this part of the curriculum EE, and dispense with the problem? I think ALS7400 TTL technology is still sufficient to learn the rudimentary basics, much as card-deck programming was close enough "to the real thing" in the 1970's.