[Lazarus] Teaching Pascal at College

[Jürgen Hestermann]

Am 2016-10-21 um 11:28 schrieb Lars via Lazarus:
 > Hmmm.. I'm not so sure learning about the internals of the CPU is so good.
 > IMO that is computer science, whereas programming is computing science.
 > I was interested in how computers physically worked, before I became a
 > programmer. One of the worst things a programmer can do is think in CPU
 > cycles because it's a low level detail that has nothing to do with the
 > program as a mathematical construct.

I am talking about the general construction of a computer:
That a CPU exists with registers to store data which runs your program
and that it has some rudimentary built in commands (a rough overview of them
is useful) and that a stack and a heap exits to store data. That's almost enough.
I am not talking about knowing how many CPU cycles a certain command takes.
But a programmer should know to what his program boils down to in the end.
Otherwise he would not know what limits exist and how to avoid exceeding them.


 > For example in mathematics when you write equations on paper do you ever
 > think about how the electronic calculator works, to process these numbers,
 > when you punch the math into your calculator? The last thing a mathematics
 > student knows about, is the internal architechture of the Casio calculator
 > he is using, because he's more focused on the maths... which IMO is good.

That is a bad comparison. In a calculator you have no choice how to
"program" equations. You just type them and get a result.
But even here you need to know how the calculator works as you may have
polish notation or the calculator may obey point before line calculation or not.
If you do not know these details you cannot use the calculator effiently.