Acceptance of OpenOffice.org (was Re: Gov't , economics and technology (was Re: METROCAST BLOCKS RESIDENTIAL E-MAIL))

[Kevin D. Clark]

Bill McGonigle writes:

> My high school taught Pascal on Z/80 machines running CPM when those
> were 'out of date'.  I think they'd still be fine for learning
> Pascal.

My high school math teacher took me aside on the first day of computer
class and told me that he didn't know anything about computers and
that he'd be depending on me a lot.  After I got Pascal installed on
all of the machines, it was a kind-of self-study in Pascal after
that.  Woo-hoo.

> Heck, I learned assembly on a VIC 20 (3583 BYTES FREE) and the
> concepts are still the same today.

I actually learned assembly language from _Machine Language for
Beginners_ and _Assembly Language for Kids_.  My impetus for learning
this stuff was that sprites were so damn slow in BASIC.

>   I'm still not convinced children
> ought to jump straight into Java as their first language - it offers
> enough of a library that you tend to do more engineering and less CS
> (exponentiation built-in!).

I'll leave it to others to opine which language is best to start with.
There seem to be lots of opinions.  But, one thing that I find to be
really weird are CS programs that start with Java but never teach C!
Ever!  I have a good friend who went through a program like this.  He
is very very smart, but he doesn't know a lot about C.  I find this to
be very...weird.  Then again, he knows a more about Java than I do.

Oh well.

--kevin
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