wnac v wnas

[heydude]

GeoffN posted:

heydude posted:
so do i,i think textspeak is evil in a way it's dumbing down people because it's a easy way of spelling,just think it's destroying the english language.

Txt is fair enough for using on a mobile phone, I think, because of not having a proper keyboard; it's when it spills over into places where it isn't necessary that it irritates me.
My kids hate me for constantly correcting their spelling, pointing out that if God had intended us to learn to spell, he wouldn't have given us "spellcheck".
(sigh)

thing is now geoffn alot of mobile phones have predictive text so really don't need to do txt anymore.

[DaveO]

Matthew posted:

MrsLam posted:
I love the programming part of my course, never done it before and we've started with VB.Net but am hoping to learn more next year.

Ah you youngsters! When I was at Uni I had to learn C which belive was not much fun! One lecturer said "C is as user friendly as a cornered rat!". Thankfully we went on to VB6 and databases later in the course!

My Uni languages were Basic, Fortran, Cobol, Algol 60, Algol 68 (I still have nightmares about that), Snobol IV, RTL/2, Lisp and for my final year project I wrote an editor in a language called B. Yes just like in the alphabet B comes before C and it was C without any types. It was the systems programming language of the Honeywell 6080 the Uni had bought! That was an antique before it was delivered.

At the OU I have used Smalltalk and Java.

If you want to earn lots of money Mrs Lam then learn as many languages as you can and learn how to tie them into as many database servers as you can - that's where the money is! (not that I'd know )

[/quote]

Java rules the roost at work (as opposed to the OU but it is taking over the courses there rapidly) and it is a great language, IMHO of course. Another odd ball language I use a lot is one called Tal specific to a particular HP server.

Dave

[GeoffN]

DaveO posted:

My Uni languages were Basic, Fortran, Cobol, Algol 60, Algol 68 (I still have nightmares about that), Snobol IV, RTL/2, Lisp and for my final year project I wrote an editor in a language called B. Yes just like in the alphabet B comes before C and it was C without any types. It was the systems programming language of the Honeywell 6080 the Uni had bought! That was an antique before it was delivered.

At the OU I have used Smalltalk and Java.

Java rules the roost at work (as opposed to the OU but it is taking over the courses there rapidly) and it is a great language, IMHO of course. Another odd ball language I use a lot is one called Tal specific to a particular HP server.

Dave

Scary! I never got into the programming side as much as I would have liked (though I agree with you about Java being a great language)...I think this was largely as a result of starting by learning "assembly language" and using punched cards!

[DaveO]

GeoffN posted:

DaveO posted:

My Uni languages were Basic, Fortran, Cobol, Algol 60, Algol 68 (I still have nightmares about that), Snobol IV, RTL/2, Lisp and for my final year project I wrote an editor in a language called B. Yes just like in the alphabet B comes before C and it was C without any types. It was the systems programming language of the Honeywell 6080 the Uni had bought! That was an antique before it was delivered.

At the OU I have used Smalltalk and Java.

Java rules the roost at work (as opposed to the OU but it is taking over the courses there rapidly) and it is a great language, IMHO of course. Another odd ball language I use a lot is one called Tal specific to a particular HP server.

Dave

Scary! I never got into the programming side as much as I would have liked (though I agree with you about Java being a great language)...I think this was largely as a result of starting by learning "assembly language" and using punched cards!

I forgeot about the assembly language. I did a bit of that at Uni as well. I also used a language called DAP-Fortran which was something ICL developed to run on their attempt at a super computer when I did a year off in industry and found myself sent to Queen Mary college in London to support the installation.

Now that WAS scary, have a look at this:

http://www.hpjava.org/talks/beijing/hpf ... node5.html

As to punch cards I remember them well! I was at Uni in Aberystwyth and we had to submit our programs on punch cards most of the time. We used to type our own on these marvellous machines. In fact when we did Algol 68 the machines in Aber were not powerful enough to run the compiler and we had to use a link to Manchester Uni's CDC 7600 and we had to submit jobs via punch cards for that.

Aber didn't have a very modern Computer Science department while I was there so the kit was rather old including a Dec PDP 11/45 which I did one project on saved on paper tape! I still have it in the attic! That machine had genuine core memory. Little ferrite cores intracately wired. A neat feature was if the thing crashed (which it did from time to time) there was a good chance on re-booting it back up you could get the program going from where it left off by running a utility as the magnets in the core held their charge!

Dave

[Carneys angel]

thegimble posted:

Carneys angel posted:
we need a coach and a stadium we need to stop you too moaning if indeed you are two people.

maybe wnac is sad enough to use another name so it looks like people actually agree with him?

So its not just me who thinks he is doing this.

NO!!! i really think he/she/it is poor little thing needs to get a life maybe someone could give him directions to the LIFE shop lol :devi:

[GeoffN]

[waterside glens]

GeoffN posted:

this is his life . i,ll bet his misses doesn,t let him talk in the house :eusa14:

[mrs_carney]

thats if she hasnt already locked him out the house, moved and not let him know where she's gone.

[Fraggle]

GeoffN posted:
Txt is fair enough for using on a mobile phone, I think, because of not having a proper keyboard; it's when it spills over into places where it isn't necessary that it irritates me.

That's always been my argument. Use txt on a phone where you're limited in how many letters you can have in a message. On t'internet there's no limit, so why is there a need to abbreviate?

My kids hate me for constantly correcting their spelling, pointing out that if God had intended us to learn to spell, he wouldn't have given us "spellcheck".
(sigh)

I lost faith in spell checkers when learning to use the website development tool Dreamweaver. Part of the page I had to build was a Welcome page briefly describing Dreamweaver, and when I ran the spell check on my new page the first word it queried was.... Dreamweaver!

[Fraggle]

heydude posted:
thing is now geoffn alot of mobile phones have predictive text so really don't need to do txt anymore.

The first thing I do when I get a new mobile is disable the predictive text, it drives me mad trying to guess what it is I want to type in a message. I don't need the bloody phone trying to tell me what to write, I'm an independantly-minded, perfectly literate fraggle!