Currently reading: Edinburgh Uni Computer Science 2h foundations course handouts from 1986/87. Even partway through the mathematical preliminaries chapter and I have a headache.
I am going to scan all of this and put online to share the joy
#computerscience #cs
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Ok, for people who want to study CS back when there was a lot less of it, I'm putting some of the notes up, starting with bits of first year CS1 & EE2 (skipped EE1 as I'd a- level physics).
EE2 taught C on BSD unix 4.2 on pdp+ vax, targeting 6809s and electronics. C lang looks a bit "younger" then.
- int is default return type...no need to state it.
- vars need to be declared at top of each function
- 'register' keyword? I really don't remember that.
https://github.com/steveloughran/edinburgh_cs/blob/main/1985-cs1/1985-ee2-c-programming-language.pdf
And alongside that, guide to the Queen Mary University "em" text editor, like "ed" only more usable, features of which went back into vi.
This is a line editor where to see what the file contents are you have to issue a p command to print the lines. It's a relic of the real teletype era. And if you launch vi as "ex" this document is still valid
Anyone who wants to try ex should print the doc, grab a vt220 font, make a terminal 80x24 full screen and try and do the homework of 150 word essay. I don't want to repeat that. Tried for 5 lines of the README and gave up
+ CS3 year form during team project, where I am allowed to work at night/weekends (no laptops, remote access only from terminals at the halls of residence & a few other places).
- no sleeping in the building
- no possession of camping equipment in the building
The only reason they would explicit restrict the carrying of camping equipment is they must have caught enough people trying to sleep there that they needed to ban it.
I spent some time at MIT media lab and the stories of what postgrads got up to there is even worse.
https://github.com/steveloughran/edinburgh_cs/blob/main/1987-cs3/1988-cs3-after-hours.jpg
