Coming and graduating from the home of P-code and Pascal,
I can tell you the pseudo code stuff has been ditched!
It died right along with the Apple IIs it was written on.

What is taught is data structures, compiler design, linear algebra
and stuff like that.  Programming in the small (PICs) is done in
a single course using emulators.  The rest is lotta theory.
I learned to learn.  That really set me back.  Now with many
years of EXPERIENCE I am finally a valuable engineer.

What is simple and obvious to some ain't to others.
That's is why we work in teams and bang this stuff out.
Without the proper tools you have too much risk and
that's how a project can fail or take too long.

-Walt...:-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Michaels [mailto:oricom@LYNX.SNI.NET]
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2000 3:17 PM
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: MPLAB-ICD firmware version 2.04 and other problems[OT]


Lance wrote:
>>
>> The PIC chips the ICD does only go up to 8K words of program memory.
>>
>> Programs that small generally don't present hard debugging problems to
>> anyone with minimal programming skills.
>>
>It must be just me then that spends hours tracking down
>obscure programme bugs. Bugger... I didnt need that ICE
>after all. Those 2 thousand line programmes should be
>whipped up before morning tea.
>
>Oh dear... sarcasm is the lowest form of wit... but this
>pressed my button.
>

Well, Lance, the difference is, here in american universities,
they teach terrific structured, top-down, modular programming
technique, using a pseudo-code step translated in final Pascal
code *ONLY* after the pseudo-code is known to be bug-free and
structured perfectly. After which, the Pascal simply falls right
out automatically, almost without looking. Aks any CS100 professor.
[BTW, that's aks, not ask].

Once you learn to do this right, anything else is easy. Shoot,
my last project had 400 total pages (about 20,000 lines) of
source code, including PC code, PIC code, and Scenix code, and
by using those few simple, easily-remembered CS100 techniques,
I just grinned all the way through it. Botta bing.

And who says "sarcasm is the lowest form of wit"? Indeed, it's
the highest form of wit in our american congress.

best regards,
- Dan Michaels
Oricom Technologies
http://www.sni.net/~oricom
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