Carbon dioxide posted:

namlosh posted:

Aghhhhhhhhh
Had to look up whether it would compile or not because I’m a c++ noob.

“final is an identifier with a special meaning when used in a member function declaration or class head. In other contexts, it is not reserved and may be used to name objects and functions.”
From here:
https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/final

Compiles, but definitely a horror

QuarkJets posted:

I used to work adjacent to a group that used Racket and Scheme because their literally diagnosed autistic lead developer was in love with those languages, but every single one of them absolutely hated working with them when it came to developing software. I didn't ask for specifics but apparently the MIT professors that created Scheme dropped it from the curriculum because they couldn't find anyone outside of academia who actually wanted to use it for anything

quote:

The "debate" had an interlude, in which Costanza asked Sussman why MIT had switched away from Scheme for their introductory programming course, 6.001. This was a gem. He said that the reason that happened was because engineering in 1980 was not what it was in the mid-90s or in 2000. In 1980, good programmers spent a lot of time thinking, and then produced spare code that they thought should work. Code ran close to the metal, even Scheme -- it was understandable all the way down. Like a resistor, where you could read the bands and know the power rating and the tolerance and the resistance and V=IR and that's all there was to know. 6.001 had been conceived to teach engineers how to take small parts that they understood entirely and use simple techniques to compose them into larger things that do what you want.

But programming now isn't so much like that, said Sussman. Nowadays you muck around with incomprehensible or nonexistent man pages for software you don't know who wrote. You have to do basic science on your libraries to see how they work, trying out different inputs and seeing how the code reacts. This is a fundamentally different job, and it needed a different course.

So the good thing about the new 6.001 was that it was robot-centered -- you had to program a little robot to move around. And robots are not like resistors, behaving according to ideal functions. Wheels slip, the environment changes, etc -- you have to build in robustness to the system, in a different way than the one SICP discusses.

namlosh posted:

“final is an identifier with a special meaning when used in a member function declaration or class head. In other contexts, it is not reserved and may be used to name objects and functions.”
From here:
https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/final

Xarn posted:

The beauty of adding new keywords and not wanting to break anyone ever, so you make the keywords contextual

take boat posted:

from what I've read that's not quite right:

http://wingolog.org/archives/2009/03/24/international-lisp-conference-day-two

Volmarias posted:

Honestly, at some point the language committee needs to just put its foot down, since it'll be years before anyone implements the changes in their compiler anyway.

QuarkJets posted:

I said "because they couldn't find anyone outside of academia who actually wanted to use it for anything", this is saying the same thing!

Beef posted:

To recap, they dropped it because there was faculty pressure to teach the 'glue libraries together' programming style rather than 'teach the foundations of programming'. That the former, cargo cult programming, is more representative of CS as a trade in industry is fueling most of the content in this thread.

Hammerite posted:

idk how you meant this to come across, but it just reads like snobbery to me.

Beef posted:

I also disagree with the implicit argument that utility in industry is a necessity for a teaching language.

Osmosisch posted:

Nah, it makes sense. Trade schools and universities should have different goals and approaches, and trying to make one into another is a fool's game.

Osmosisch posted:

Nah, it makes sense. Trade schools and universities should have different goals and approaches, and trying to make one into another is a fool's game.

Dijkstracula posted:

probably the strongest argument in favour of it is that you'll otherwise have a constant stream of alumni donors and overachieving first-year honours students in your office whining about you're not teaching marketable, buzzword-compliant skills

(e: It's probably an easier sell now but back in the oughts when I was TAing that Racket class folks were still coming out of the "the only path to a good internship placement is to be allegedly taught Java OOP in your first year" mindset)

Beef posted:

I hear you. In our case, most of the pressure against Scheme/Racket was coming from uni admin and from inside the department, mostly from non-PLR staff that did not follow our own CS program. Anecdotally, I've seen alumni being pretty vocal and supportive of using a Scheme as first bachelor teaching language.

Beef posted:

To recap, they dropped it because there was faculty pressure to teach the 'glue libraries together' programming style rather than 'teach the foundations of programming'. That the former, cargo cult programming, is more representative of CS as a trade in industry is fueling most of the content in this thread.

Beef posted:

To clarify, I did not mean to dismiss all glue programming. The intended implication was that when you are only teaching that style, you tend to deliver cargo cult programmers.

QuarkJets posted:

But you can see how that connects to what I said, right? The pressure wasn't specifically to change languages, it was to include third party library integration in the curriculum. How do you do that with a language that has no third party libraries?

QuarkJets posted:

But you can see how that connects to what I said, right? The pressure wasn't specifically to change languages, it was to include third party library integration in the curriculum. How do you do that with a language that has no third party libraries?

OddObserver posted:

That feels like a useful skill but also one best kept out of the very intro courses?

QuarkJets posted:

Why?

QuarkJets posted:

Why?

OddObserver posted:

Get people comfortable with the basics and building abstractions of their own before they deal with third-party ones?

Hammerite posted:

I wouldn't dispute what you say in your post here, but there is a lot more than that in Beef's paragraph I quoted. Do you think, like he does that it is reasonable to dismiss any form of programming that can be characterised as "gluing libraries together" as "cargo cult programming"? I do not.

Osmosisch posted:

Nah, it makes sense. Trade schools and universities should have different goals and approaches, and trying to make one into another is a fool's game.

Volmarias posted:

Like it or not, let me know when you find (non sysadmin) computer speaker jobs that don't demand a computer science degree in the job posting. Imagine if everyone who wanted to be an electrical engineer had to have a BA in Physics because "that's what understanding how electricity works is, right? If you want to wire up lights go to electrician school"

I barely touch any of the CS studies I learned since I've graduated, because I am not an academic, but every job has required that degree because there's nothing else proximate to it.

ultrafilter posted:

If you find a way of teaching CS that doesn't produce cargo cult programmers please let the rest of us know.

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

There is a distinction to be made between 'Software Engineer' and 'API Technician'. File me under 'elitist prick' here I guess, but I'm going to put a shitload more stock into what a C++ greybeard has to say vs someone who's spent their entire life in a browser.

Canine Blues Arooo posted:

I think the closer you get to foundational knowledge, the less likelihood you will have this problem. Perhaps a better way of saying this is, 'The more foundational your knowledge, the more equipped you are to make pragmatic choices'.

There is a distinction to be made between 'Software Engineer' and 'API Technician'. File me under 'elitist prick' here I guess, but I'm going to put a shitload more stock into what a C++ greybeard has to say vs someone who's spent their entire life in a browser.