On Oct 5, 11:52 pm, "Vince O'Sullivan" <[email protected]> wrote: > On Oct 6, 7:11 am, mikeb01 <[email protected]> wrote: > > > In the UK, some high school CS students are being introduced to the > > BBC Micro as a way to teach core computing concepts. > > >http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10951040 > > That's impressive. Someone there has obviously thought about the > problem (how to properly ground the students in the basics) and not > just talked about it but put a solution in place.
Of all the early machines to bring back as a learning experience for college-level CS students, a motherboard based on the original Mac running the early Mac OS using just a strait-on Motorola 68000 coupled to the LightSpeed C IDE/compiler would be a very interesting vehicle. There's enough serious meat in that combo to keep students learning and exploring different facets of computing for some time. It's every bit as open and hackable as the 6502 PCs with their ROM BASICs but at a more sophisticated level - a level of sophistication that more closely resembles computers of today. Play directly with Quickdraw and learn how a graphics library and windowing system are built from the ground up. Play with the trap dispatch table and begin to groc a core concept of an OS - how to invoke OS services and yet allow for flexibility/extensibility down the road, etc. Obviously such a machine would be pre-memory protection and virtual memory paging, but that is on purpose - save that level of OS sophistication for the more advanced curriculum on OS architecture. A completely open machine like the early Mac is one that is amendable to much more experimentation/exploration - i.e., just unadulterated hacking. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
