Re: [LogoForum] Is LOGO an educational language only?

The message below is being cross-posted from LogoForum.

ahhhh, the days of slide-rules, where have they gone?
I have a 10-foot Picket on the wall of my high school classroom right now. It brings back great memories.
Cheryl

Dale Reed <dale-reed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Some of the answers are historical accidents (BASIC was available to home
computer users first and free),

Borland's Turbo Pascal(TP) was the first language that was used for
engineering purposes, on the new PCs(no Apples) slowly introduced into
Boeing over 15 years ago. Analysis and plotting TP programs were written
and used to design and compare calculated and measured data. These programs
were created not by programmers but by engineers without any formal computer
or programming training. On our own time, when the bosses were not
looking, especially on weekends. Eventually we started buying PC's(TP) to
be used at home but they were mighty expensive and most offsite(worldwide
field sites) calculations were still done with programmable HP calculators
which replaced the sliderules we had used before.

Of course the really serious design work was done(before and after the PC's
were introduced) on mainframes(FORTRAN batch jobs where a misplaced/missing
comma would cause a Fatal Error resulting in reams and reams of wasted
paper.) The mainframe FORTRAN software was created by highly skilled
computer programmers(lots of them) working with a few electromagnetic
engineers who could deal with Maxwell's Equations, transmission lines,
antennas, etc. There was a PDC something or other that the most aware
engineers were modeling with but my only experience with this computer was
using it(connected to a digitizing table and pen) to digitize the cross
section of a horizontal stabilizer for lightning current flow calculations
on the mainframe and the PC's.

The above briefly describes my computer experiences while engineering the
protection against the High Altitude Nuclear ElectroMagnetic Pulse(NEMP)
protection of the buried(Montana, Missouri, Wyoming, South Dakota...)
Minuteman nukes, and during my design of the Induced Lightning shielding for
the fly-by-wire 777. Swords into Plowshares!

I have never used BASIC but I probably still have a few BASIC fractals etc.
that Yehuda posted to this LogoForum a few years ago. My oldest son(40 year
old Professional Electrical Engineer) presently does some VISUAL BASIC
programming during his work. But once again, I assume this is done during
spare moments and at home rather than during his normal work day. Dale
---
$ dale-reed@xxxxxxx Seattle, Washington USA $




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