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   On 2023-12-31, TimS  wrote:   
      
   > On 31 Dec 2023 at 11:35:35 GMT, "Pancho"  wrote:   
   >   
   >> I thought university CS courses of the era avoided C and preferred more   
   >> academic, pedagogical languages: Pascal, Prolog, Smalltalk, ML, Lisp.   
      
   During my abortive university CS period (1968-1971) there was a course   
   whose purpose was to expose you to as many programming languages as   
   possible, hitting you with a new one every two weeks.  Algol 60,   
   Algol 68, Algol W, LISP, UMIST, SNOBOL4...  Fortunately I dropped   
   out before having to take that one.   
      
   > My postgrad CS course was 1967/68 and we had a small (but ample) exposure to   
   > Lisp, and also some flavour of Algol on the department's IBM 7094. There was   
   > some clumsiness about using the Algol implementation that is now lost in the   
   > mists of time - a character set limitation, perhaps.   
      
   I remember that.  It had something to do with enclosing all keywords   
   in apostrophes in place of the bold-faced type in the reference books.   
   It was nasty both in appearance and typing.   
      
   We started off with FORTRAN and moved to IBM 360 assembly language,   
   then on to other languages like PL/I.  I decided I liked assembly   
   language because there was no snooty compiler slapping my wrist and   
   telling me I couldn't do something.   
      
   In one term project we were divided into three-person groups.  The   
   other two wanted to use PL/I while I insisted on assembly language;   
   we compromised by having them do the theoretical processing in PL/I   
   while I wrote the I/O processor in assembly language.  Interfacing   
   the two was a bear.   
      
   In another term project where we worked individually, I wrote my program   
   in assembly language.  During the review my prof (also the CS department   
   head and one of the creators of Algol 68) would repeatedly look at me with   
   a pained expression and ask, "Why did you do it in assembly language?"   
      
   However, all ended well.  I left the CS types in their ivory tower and   
   found a job in the Real World [tm], writing code in assembly language   
   and RPG.  (The machines I worked on were too small to handle COBOL.)   
      
   Then along came C - it was a godsend, and I use it to this day.   
      
   --   
   /~\  Charlie Gibbs                  |  The Internet is like a big city:   
   \ /        |  it has plenty of bright lights and   
    X   I'm really at ac.dekanfrus     |  excitement, but also dark alleys   
   / \  if you read it the right way.  |  down which the unwary get mugged.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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