[Nuke]

first language i learned was c, then c++. but i wasn't that good back then, so i did most of my early programs in vb (and messed around some with quake c). this was in my high school computer science class. then i just focused on graphics and didnt try programming again until fairly recently.

ive never used java, and from the horror stories i hear i dont think i want to.

[karajorma]

My opinion tends to be that if you have a go at Java you're only showing your own ignorance. Java is very good at what it was designed for. If you're using it to write graphics intensive tasks and then complaining it doesn't work well then you're an idiot.

It's like complaining that screwdrivers are rubbish because you can't hammer in nails with them.

[Nuke]

funny, ive set nails with a screwdriver before

[karajorma]

Exactly. You can do it. You just have to recognise it isn't the best tool for the job and you have to know how to get around its limitations.

[blackhole]

That article can be as misleading, elitist, biased, and crackpot-filled as you guys want. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the underlying message, which is what i agree with.

Pumping out CS majors that don't know what pointers are or how a computer allocates memory is not a good thing. I don't care if your programming Half Life 3 or if your making a bank statement tracking program. You just went to collage to get this degree, you ought to know how a computer works instead of relying on prebuilt code to do it all for you - without understanding what that code actually does.

There is nothing wrong with using prebuilt code to avoid reinventing the wheel. There is something wrong with collage grads that rely on prebuilt code to do all this stuff because they don't know how to do it themselves.

I don't care what language they use. I do, however, care about what they're teaching.

[Hippo]

Pumping out CS majors that don't know what pointers are or how a computer allocates memory is not a good thing. I don't care if your programming Half Life 3 or if your making a bank statement tracking program. You just went to collage to get this degree, you ought to know how a computer works instead of relying on prebuilt code to do it all for you - without understanding what that code actually does.

There is nothing wrong with using prebuilt code to avoid reinventing the wheel. There is something wrong with collage grads that rely on prebuilt code to do all this stuff because they don't know how to do it themselves.

this.

[TrashMan]

I have to agree here..

Even I know how to use pointers and allocate memory....I think..havn't done it in a loooong while.

Point is, one has to learn the basics of how a computer works on the fundamental level and how the software works, the code.
I started with Pascal and then moved to Basic, C, C++ and Java (a a dozen of other I can now barely remeber..LISP and a few others )

[Darklord42]

Real programmers use notepad. 

[Nuke]

notepad++ is better

[WMCoolmon]

Real programmers use notepad. 

I write all my programs using character map and a pipe on the command line to the empty executable file.

[Dark Hunter]

I use Programmer's Notepad... that close enough?

[Mika]

Notepad is only the start. The Real Programmers calculate, talk, read and write in hexadecimal. The Really Advanced Programmers can do binary.

No, I don't belong to either of them. But I have seen some older people checking through the voltage values of CPU-lines with a multichannel oscilloscope and read the data through voltage values (0 V, 5 V). That was pretty crazy already.

Mika

[SadisticSid]

But I have seen some older people checking through the voltage values of CPU-lines with a multichannel oscilloscope and read the data through voltage values (0 V, 5 V). That was pretty crazy already.

Mika

Uhh, if such a thing were possible to measure on an oscilloscope the CPU would have to be running at <10Hz to see in real time. And no silicon has ever run that slow.

[WMCoolmon]

I only barely understand how you'd actually do that, but I've used oscilloscopes (in a class, no less, these were old analog things) that went down to about 2ms before. Given that, it seems like the resolution would be good enough to see a signal of several mhz, up to at least 16mhz (Since the entire screen would have a "width" of 500hz)

With a newer/more expensive oscilloscope you could probably up that value quite a bit, once you reach 66-100mhz you're at the lower end of FSB speeds that were common 5 years ago.

[SadisticSid]

I only barely understand how you'd actually do that, but I've used oscilloscopes (in a class, no less, these were old analog things) that went down to about 2ms before. Given that, it seems like the resolution would be good enough to see a signal of several mhz, up to at least 16mhz (Since the entire screen would have a "width" of 500hz)

With a newer/more expensive oscilloscope you could probably up that value quite a bit, once you reach 66-100mhz you're at the lower end of FSB speeds that were common 5 years ago.

You could do, but I'd imagine it'd take weeks or months of work to make sense of one second's worth of data.

[Mika]

I almost forgot this thread. Too much (drunken) fun with the buddies from studying times.

It is relatively easy to check the processor lines' information content, attach a voltage meter to the line to give you an idea. Unfortunately, you cannot do this with normal hand held voltage meters because of the refresh rates and integration times. This is also the reason why I think that any copy protection system will ultimately fail. It is a question of how easy this is to do, and currently it is probably too difficult for your common pirate or geek to handle.

Instead, one could utilize an oscilloscope, but current processors have 32 to 64 lines each of which must be monitored if the information content needs to be decyphered. I doubt you can easily find a digital oscilloscope that could support so many channels, also signal frequencies above 3 GHz (period of 0.3 ns - still doable) might make it difficult for the oscilloscope. Instead of that, one can use logic analyzers that don't bother with the accurate voltage sampling, the only thing which matters is whether the voltage is up or not. This way, the sampling frequency might get much higher so that 3 GHz is quite easy.

But the real problem is, according to my understanding, that the 8086 processors are still quite nice to teach students what is actually going on in the computer. With 8086 you can nicely follow the flow instructions to the processor, and processor answering them each on their own turn, in Assembly controlled loops for an example. Newer processors (since 80386 IIRC) have some kind of internal system, some of the assignments are returned earlier and some of the later, but the system keeps track of the assignment numbers so that the rest of the computer sees nothing special in the data. Even though the processor computed them in a totally different order. It is relatively difficult to follow that kind of data flow.

For the programmers:
How did you actually think that the processor testing would happen, if you couldn't follow the data flow physically?

Mika