On 2017-05-25, Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 25 May 2017 00:34:52 +0100, bartc <b...@freeuk.com> declaimed the
> following:
>
>
>>That was quite likely with older Fortrans, where subroutines only
>>used pass-by-reference, but which didn't stop you passing references
>>to constants that the subroutine could then modify.
>
> For the most part, Fortran is still pass-by-reference (VMS F77 did
> have a "descriptor" for character strings -- it had the address of
> the buffer along with a field for the size of the buffer).
When I was in grad school in Computer Science, one of the professors
wrote a test question that had multiple correct answers depending on
whether parameters were passed by reference, value, name, thunk,
whatever. [The parameter passing mechanism and programming language
were unspecified.]
I wrote that I was assuming pass by value and then provided my
solution.
He marked it wrong -- not even any partial credit.
I went to discuss it with him: he said my answer was wrong because
parameters are passed by reference. He had never even heard of any
other method! I tried to explain that some languages pass by value,
some lanaguages pass by reference, some languages allow the user to
specify either, and that there were other methods as well. He failed
to comprehend anything other than pass by reference. I tried to
explain the other methods, and gave him examples of languages that
used them. He again failed to grok any of it and gave me credit for
the question just to get rid of me. [I like to think he realized he
was in over his head and didn't want to admit the extent of his
ignorance].
All of his degrees were in math (I'm pretty sure he had ever _taken_ a
CS course in his life). His main programming language was
self-modifying CDC-6600 assembly language (he also used FORTRAN
occasionally on the 6600). IIRC, his area of speciality was integer
division algorothims.
They later made him chair of the graduate studies department (or
something like that) -- presumably to keep him out of the classroom
and away from students.
--
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