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From: scottw@bmtech.demon.co.uk (Scott Wheeler)
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Subject: Re: Which first-course languages? (was: What schools use Eiffel (was: No top schools use Ada)) ?
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Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 19:12:36 +0000
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In Article <3n35ja$6u3@theopolis.orl.mmc.com> Theodore Dennison  
writes:
>>Miranda????
>>Languages are kind of a hobby with me, but I have NEVER heard of that
>>one [Miranda].

Obscure functional language, as you know now. I had to interview 
someone yesterday, who's CS course had used only Miranda, Modula-2 and 
Oberon (Imperial College, London). I think it's an excellent idea to 
teach using some of these languages (I'm quite keen on Eiffel myself), 
but we wouldn't even have considered employing him if he hadn't learnt 
C under his own steam.

Diverging a little from the subject, could I also put in a plea for 
anyone designing CS courses to include a little time (couple of days) 
on the underlying machine representations? Three times now, I've had CS 
graduates or doctors complaining that their compilers are broken, and 
found that they were comparing floating point numbers for equality.

Scott
