5 ms·

In other words, France ;-)

by junke 11y ago

gaius 11y ago
The land of OCaml!
- criddell 11y ago
  And Eiffel and Bertrand Meyer!
  - YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago
    And Prolog.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      The jury is still open about Prolog vs Planner isn't it ?
      - YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago
        How do you mean that? I'm not sure.
        agumonkey 11y ago
        That planner was superior and prior Prolog.
        YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago
        Prior, yes. Superior, how?
nickpsecurity 11y ago
I give the French credit on that angle. They're certainly in the lead for practical R&D + tools for building and verifying software. Especially anything coming out of INRIA or Meyer's teams. I never heard of AdaCore being French, though. Only two of the Executive Team (below) were educated in France with most of them (and Ada itself) coming out of U.S. (esp NY). Headquarters is split between the two at least in Contact page. I could be way off so anyone feel free on input to this. http://www.adacore.com/company/about/executive-team/ http://www.adacore.com/company/about/executive-team/
- agumonkey 11y ago
  French Univ tried their best to teach the good stuff. We had Ada, Scheme, OCaml. Too bad it looked like esoteric dust for many compared to the Java Juggernaut. From the few I've seen it seemed large system became a synonym for UML, not generic formal modular approach. But I left this around 2008, maybe the winds have changed. I wonder how much 'fresh' Ada is done today (classes, new projects, etc)
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    All good choices. I'm glad they tried at least. I'm not sure about France but in U.S. universities are expected to give people the job skills they need. Pascal might be easy to learn with and Scheme might be more ideal. Yet, most jobs were using Java or C++ so many schools switched to using those. People start from day 1 thinking that's how programming and design are supposed to work. Kind of sad. I'm not arguing universities should be impractical. I just encourage them to teach both what's beneficial to the mind and quality of our industry plus the practical tech. Increases odds good things will spill-over from one to the other.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      That's the underlying tension. It's hard to avoid, I think it has detrimental effect on the whole industry. Unless schools were sure of the skills transfer from Ada/Scheme to Java/.Net or whatever tech used on a job they could enforce better education of better concepts rather than ensuring a easier to sell resume. The market decided the other way around.
    - hga 11y ago
      Well, MIT started the Scheme for education thing with SICP/6.001 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_o...) in the early '80s, the thesis being that you could start fresh with it, no introduction to computers or the particular language used in the course, and get right to business, instead of wasting half the class between learning a more complex and picky syntax and fighting with the language to express things not natural to it. It's also default interpreted, so the write code->run code cycle is instantaneous (although the ones MIT used had compilers, and nowadays machines are so fast LISPs tend to immediately compile everything typed into the REPL). Typing is of course important, the argument here is that for initial education, dynamic typing when these small programs are run is better than adding the complexity of declaring types, especially since so few are needed in an introduction course. A CS (and EE, i.e. 6-3) or EECS (6-2, what most students major in today) major would learn CLU, later Java, when they took either the software engineering or compiler course. And of course there were many opportunities to learn languages and get paid for programming, including the co-op program, which is now mostly formalized into a MEng program that most students do. The dot.com crash cratered EECS enrollment, which had been steady at 40% of the undergraduate for decades, it dropped by more than half. People panicked, Lisp haters made sure all of it was expunged from required undergraduate courses, and MIT just plain changed what it meant to be a MIT EECS graduate. With a lot of surface politeness, here's one for the record explanation: http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-from-scheme-to-python http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-fr... It's now much more about making gadgets than, oh, trustworthy libraries. Pity almost no one, proprietary or FOSS, provides any of the latter. A portion of 6.001 is taught by the 6.001-zombies in January, with credit available for the first N who sign up, as 6.037, and if you don't know Python when you arrive, there's courses which will teach you it before you take the new 6.01 that pretends to start replacing 6.001. Or, if you're really serious about pure CS, you're likely better off going to some place like CMU if you can get into the program. (I got the impression some years ago when CS became popular again that Stanford is more like CMU and U.C. Berkeley more like MIT, but I don't know if that's true or still true. If you're serious about CS and can't get into one of those 4 best in the world with no one close behind, you should think very carefully about your path forward.)

In other words, France ;-)

by junke 11y ago

In other words, France ;-)

gaius 11y ago

The land of OCaml!

criddell 11y ago
And Eiffel and Bertrand Meyer!
- YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago
  And Prolog.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    The jury is still open about Prolog vs Planner isn't it ?
    - YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago
      How do you mean that? I'm not sure.
      - agumonkey 11y ago
        That planner was superior and prior Prolog.
        YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago
        Prior, yes. Superior, how?

nickpsecurity 11y ago

I give the French credit on that angle. They're certainly in the lead for practical R&D + tools for building and verifying software. Especially anything coming out of INRIA or Meyer's teams. I never heard of AdaCore being French, though. Only two of the Executive Team (below) were educated in France with most of them (and Ada itself) coming out of U.S. (esp NY). Headquarters is split between the two at least in Contact page. I could be way off so anyone feel free on input to this. http://www.adacore.com/company/about/executive-team/ http://www.adacore.com/company/about/executive-team/

agumonkey 11y ago
French Univ tried their best to teach the good stuff. We had Ada, Scheme, OCaml. Too bad it looked like esoteric dust for many compared to the Java Juggernaut. From the few I've seen it seemed large system became a synonym for UML, not generic formal modular approach. But I left this around 2008, maybe the winds have changed. I wonder how much 'fresh' Ada is done today (classes, new projects, etc)
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  All good choices. I'm glad they tried at least. I'm not sure about France but in U.S. universities are expected to give people the job skills they need. Pascal might be easy to learn with and Scheme might be more ideal. Yet, most jobs were using Java or C++ so many schools switched to using those. People start from day 1 thinking that's how programming and design are supposed to work. Kind of sad. I'm not arguing universities should be impractical. I just encourage them to teach both what's beneficial to the mind and quality of our industry plus the practical tech. Increases odds good things will spill-over from one to the other.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    That's the underlying tension. It's hard to avoid, I think it has detrimental effect on the whole industry. Unless schools were sure of the skills transfer from Ada/Scheme to Java/.Net or whatever tech used on a job they could enforce better education of better concepts rather than ensuring a easier to sell resume. The market decided the other way around.
  - hga 11y ago
    Well, MIT started the Scheme for education thing with SICP/6.001 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_o...) in the early '80s, the thesis being that you could start fresh with it, no introduction to computers or the particular language used in the course, and get right to business, instead of wasting half the class between learning a more complex and picky syntax and fighting with the language to express things not natural to it. It's also default interpreted, so the write code->run code cycle is instantaneous (although the ones MIT used had compilers, and nowadays machines are so fast LISPs tend to immediately compile everything typed into the REPL). Typing is of course important, the argument here is that for initial education, dynamic typing when these small programs are run is better than adding the complexity of declaring types, especially since so few are needed in an introduction course. A CS (and EE, i.e. 6-3) or EECS (6-2, what most students major in today) major would learn CLU, later Java, when they took either the software engineering or compiler course. And of course there were many opportunities to learn languages and get paid for programming, including the co-op program, which is now mostly formalized into a MEng program that most students do. The dot.com crash cratered EECS enrollment, which had been steady at 40% of the undergraduate for decades, it dropped by more than half. People panicked, Lisp haters made sure all of it was expunged from required undergraduate courses, and MIT just plain changed what it meant to be a MIT EECS graduate. With a lot of surface politeness, here's one for the record explanation: http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-from-scheme-to-python http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-fr... It's now much more about making gadgets than, oh, trustworthy libraries. Pity almost no one, proprietary or FOSS, provides any of the latter. A portion of 6.001 is taught by the 6.001-zombies in January, with credit available for the first N who sign up, as 6.037, and if you don't know Python when you arrive, there's courses which will teach you it before you take the new 6.01 that pretends to start replacing 6.001. Or, if you're really serious about pure CS, you're likely better off going to some place like CMU if you can get into the program. (I got the impression some years ago when CS became popular again that Stanford is more like CMU and U.C. Berkeley more like MIT, but I don't know if that's true or still true. If you're serious about CS and can't get into one of those 4 best in the world with no one close behind, you should think very carefully about your path forward.)