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<p><i>Sorry, a looong message.</i><br>
</p>
<p>Le 16/03/2017 à 23:38, Brandon Allbery a écrit :<br>
</p>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAKFCL4W4b3OBgcudhqBseyy+p4hFqoLjjdhbDoFVKayq87R6kw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite"> programs are best written for clarity; the *compiler*
should be optimizing, not the programmer, whenever possible.</blockquote>
<br>
A historical anecdote...<br>
When something called 'cybernetics' ceased to be in the Soviet Union
a bourgeois pseudo-science whose aim was to enslave the the Class of
Workers, etc., and Russians and their satellites began to
manufacture computers, they managed quite fast to master the main
idea of interesting algorithms, exquisite data structures and their
processing. They COULD have invented some nice programming languages
(we are at the end of '50-ties...), but among many other
calamities, their forerunners said that they had some wonderful
teams of very competent mathematicians, who, once instructed how to
program computers, would do Wonders, in the name of the True
Proletarian Science.<br>
<br>
It was partly true (mathematicians, Andrey Markov Jr., Andrey
Ershov, etc., not necessarily the Proletarian Science...) .<br>
So, when the ideal personage of THE Programmer became in US a cliché
in some science-fiction books (e.g., Asimov's), in the world of the
True Proletarian Science, very decent humans wasted a horrible
amont of time producing low-level codes, and neglecting completely
the domain of compilation... They managed to put Sputnik and Gagarin
above our heads, but programming languages did not evolve...
[[Although the Snobol language invented by Ralph Griswold, was
partly based on the Markov algorithm concept]].<br>
<br>
Now, the morale of this story?...<br>
Wait a bit.<br>
<br>
Second round.<br>
There is a pedagogical initiative, called the International Olympiad
in Informatics. ( <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ioinformatics.org/index.shtml">http://www.ioinformatics.org/index.shtml</a> ).<br>
The evolution of this contest, participating countries, etc., is a
very interesting story, but here I want just to tell you something
different. In Wikipedia you will read that<i><b> it is an annual
competitive programming competition for secondary school
students. It is the second largest olympiad, after International
Mathematical Olympiad </b></i><i><b><br>
</b></i><i><b>The contest consists of two days of computer
programming and problem-solving of algorithmic nature. To deal
with problems involving very large amounts of data, it is
necessary to have not only programmers, <font color="#cc0000">"but
also creative coders, who can dream up what it is that the
programmers need to tell the computer to do. The hard part
isn't the programming, but the mathematics underneath it.... "</font><br>
<br>
</b></i>Nice. And now: the TRUTH.<b> The only languages which are
permitted are C, C++, and Java</b>. Sorry, recently also Pascal,
the Eastern Europe insisted upon it.<br>
I looked through the proposed tasks. A good percentage of them were
puzzles of logical kind. But no logical languages were allowed.
Something which can be coded in 12 lines of CLP, has to be
ceeplusjavaised on 8 pages, and the Jury acknowledges the speed and
efficiency of such programs... Laugh or weep?...<br>
Functional languages? Anybody heard of them?...<br>
<br>
Don't blame the Soviets, please... Look up the <font
color="#3333ff"><b>British Informatics Olympiad</b></font>. The
rules I found randomly for the 2000 contest stipulated: <i><b>"The
languages available will be Turbo Pascal and Turbo C/C++." </b></i>Yes,
not just C++, but compulsory Borland dialect.<br>
More?<br>
Let's see the <font color="#3333ff"><b>ACM International Collegiate
Programming Contest</b></font>. Rules: <i><b>"... They must
submit solutions as programs in C, C++, Java or Python
(although it is not guaranteed every problem is solvable in
Python)." </b></i>(Most probably the author doesn't know what
Python is...)<br>
<br>
This is the way we teach our youth to be creative ! In such a way we
inspire them to became "creative coders". You may think whatever you
wish, but I am convinced that the best part of the responsibility
for such a calamitous picture of the CS pedagogy, falls upon those
feeble-minded "professionals" who know better what is good, what is
the "main stream" which should be promoted, and what is "wrong",
which should be severely punished. The totalitarian (or
fundamentalist) doctrines are everywhere. Let's build some more
huge screening walls, and forbid the presence of people who think
otherwise, and we shall be Great Again.<br>
<br>
Jerzy Karczmarczuk<br>
/Caen, France/<br>
<br>
<br>
<i><b><br>
<br>
<br>
</b></i>
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