European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - October 10, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Tia Isi Coil pm learning to program by , Shannon naw York times Here was a Lime when the owner d a now personal computer laced an intimidating question at the outset 10 program or not id program commercial programs did no exist in today s profusion heir designers assumed the user possessed a father High level of knowledge and the programs themselves had the disconcerting habit of failing at Conj Ciao moments. The sensible if difficult Way out was for the user a learn enough to fix or customize an existing program. H not to write one. Two of the first consumer computers the Hind a person might buy on impulse out of curiosity were the Little Sinclair which looked like a glorified calculator and the Vic-20, Commodore s entry into the Home Market. Bolh came with Basic Buill in and the manuals assumed that the buyer would want to learn How to program in that fairly Friendly language. Then computer literacy meant knowing How to write a program. Today it Means knowing your Way around a computer and not being frightened by it. So Why learn to program at All Well some people enjoy it just As some High school students enjoy geometry. Other people Are alluded to he Field As a profession or to a related profession. Still others remember the stones a Lew of them True about self Laught programmers who wrote routines that earned them red sports cars and italian Villas. A programming language is nothing but a computer program itself when your machine is running Basic for example entering the statement print 12" causes the program to translate thai into the several primitive Steps that result the blink of an Eye later in the number "3" appearing on the screen. Those primitive Steps Are machine language the strings of 03 and 1s that Are the Only Tang ago he computer understands. The of and 1 a symbolize which electronic switches Ere Oil and which Are on thus directing the flow of current through the Miles of wiring inside the Box. Most owners or personal computers already own Basic if in s not built in it usually comes with the operating system the essential program that transforms the machine from a collection of chips and circuit boards into something thai can accomplish useful work Baste is a perfectly Good place to Start although Many educators and computer professionals criticize it for its relative slowness and almost anarchic Freedom of expression and prefer a language with More discipline built in. Pascal is one such language. Others have name like api Lisp c and Forth. What All these so called High level languages have in common is Hal they imitate the thinking patterns of humans albeit logicians and mathematicians and largely insulate the Programmer from the Messy details that Are the tedious soul of the machine. Between machine language the of and is and a High level language Basic or Pascal is Assembly language. Instead of using 1he error prone binary strings a capital a for example is 01000001you Uso three letter mnemonics  the computer s operations cup for compare jump for jump mov Tor move. A new Book ism Assembly language simplified is an metro Dulfon that guides the Reader through the creation of a simple program. It also explains the fundamental instructions of ism pc style machines. You won t be a finished Assembly language Programmer when you comp Tele the course but you la be off to a solid Start. Ism Assembly language Simp Mied by Rulh Wessler is $15.95 in sell covers. It is published by Tab books Blue fridge Summit a. 17294. C is a popular High level programming language used in Many professional applications. It is fast tightly organized and extremely difficult 1o learn. Microsoft s Quick a version with menus mice and Many other aids is the equivalent to outfitting a race car with an automatic transmission and Power steering. Micro Soll Quick programming brings it All together. In about 600 pages Quick programming deals with looping and branches arrays and strings modes and debugging. Although the authors members of the Waile croup a Developer of technical books say the work can be understood by beginners it you can t define the terms in the previous sentence you would be Well advised to atari with a More accessible language. For those with More than a nodding acquaintance with Basic or Pascal this is a Clear and authoritative approach to c. Computer networks link pcs Tyjohn Markoff new York times new Era in corporate computing is emerging bringing an end to the chaos and tension that have prevailed at companies since personal computers invaded the workplace. Elaborate networks of computers Are chaining loge Lher the millions of stand alone Persona computers which in recent years have put enormous computing Power and control Over data in the hands of individual workers but which have disrupted the centralized control of corporate information if these new networks Are creating order and increasing productivity in the workplace however they Are causing turmoil in the computer Industry by changing the rules and putting vast markets up for grabs. When the personal computer first became widely available Early in this decade office workers eagerly seized upon the new tool armed with their own desktop machines and one of the popular spreadsheet programs these workers were Able to liberate themselves from the mainframe computer and the Rule of the corporate data processing manager. Before the pc Boom. There was a fair amount of pent up frustration at the inability to gel the data necessary to do your Job said Stephen Crummy a senior vice president at the Lotus development corp., a software publisher that led the personal computer Boom with its 1-2-3 spreadsheet program. The growing use of personal computers put office workers at Odds with the data processing managers who rebelled against an erosion of their Power a proliferation of incompatible machines and caches of data Scall ered throughout a company. Now a More regimented world is emerging in which Ever More powerful personal computers Are being linked together. Large organizations Are finding that it s very expensive to be out control they re moving to Lake Back some control said Judy Estrin. Executive vies president of network computing devices inc., a Mountain View calif., manufacturer of inexpensive computers that Are solely for networks. With the Advent of the new networks control of company data is beginning to shift Back to the corporate computer manager and the centralized computing characteristic of the earlier generations of mainframe computers and their smaller powerful siblings the minicomputers. A major question now however is whether a network should be organized solely around desktop computers or whether it should include a mainframe or a Minicomputer perhaps As the network s Central player. To Date the growth of network computing has struck hardest at Veteran Minicomputer makers Wang laboratories inc., the Hewlett Packard co. And the digital equipment corp under Strong sales pressure Tram the powerful personal compilers being bought for corporate networks the three have seen the value of their Slock fall by More than 20 percent since the first of the year. The shift toward the desktop computer network is also partly responsible  the bit  Battle touched off by the recent Alliance Between the american Telephone and Telegraph co. And Sun Micro systems inc. The to companies Are trying to set a new Industry software and hardware Standard designed to Foster network computing at the expense of mainframe computers and minicomputers. The Standard is to be based on at to s unix software operating system. Their Union has created resistance from the Industry leaders the International business machines corp. And digital which Are leading a group that is promoting a competing design that would better position their machines in the desktop computer network Competition. When they replace their minicomputers Many companies create networks of powerful 32-bit desktop computers for example at Delouie a shins & Sells he accounting firm a departmental group now uses a new orc of advanced Compaq desktop computers to keep track o financial matters related to Bond offerings. Sober 10,1988 the stars and stripes Pagats