Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!csri.toronto.edu!norvell
From: norvell@csri.toronto.edu (Theodore Stevens Norvell)
Subject: Re: Can Turing survive?
Illegal-Object: Bad References value found by ZMailer on jarvis.csri.toronto.edu:
	<6854@june.cs.washington.edu(?illegal end of message identification?)) <1147@goofy.megatest.UUCP><201@becker.UUCP> ;
Message-ID: <8901082316.AA20764@esplanade.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: University of Toronto, CSRI
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 89 18:16:51 EST

In article <201@becker.UUCP> bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker) writes:
>In article <1147@goofy.megatest.UUCP> djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) writes:
>+------------------
>|From article <6854@june.cs.washington.edu), by pattis@june.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis):
>|) 1. Give away the compiler to educational institutions, or make it very cheap.
>|) 2. Write an Introduction to Programming book that (a) surpasses all the
>|)      Pascal books in clarity, (2) really shows off the language; that is,
>|)      one can't just translate the "best" Pascal book into Turing - instead
>|)      the book must be reorganized along the lines of Turing's strengths.
>
>	I believe such a book exists, written by John Holt if I
>	remember correctly. I don't recall the name or publisher,
>	but it's the standard intro text at the University of Toronto.
>
That's Ric Holt.
The full reference is

R.C.Holt & J.N.P.Hume, Introduction to Computer Science using the Turing
Programming Language, Reston (Prentice Hall), 1984.

It's been a while since I read it cover to cover, but it is a very clear
introductory book.  When I was tutoring courses that used this book,
I don't remember having to clarify any material that was in it.
It covers almost all of Turing, missing only a few
nifty things like the bind declaration and alias prevention
(these are covered in an appendix).  It predates Turing Plus and
so covers none of the Turing Plus extensions.

There is a second book aimed at graduate level or upper-undergradate
level students.  It is

R.C.Holt, P.A.Mathews, J.A.Rosselet, & J.R.Cordy, The TURING programming
language: design and definition, Prentice Hall, 1987.

It contains justification for Turing's design and also contains its
formal definition.

I don't know the price of the vax, 370 or sun compilers, but I would be
suprised if they were costly.  Perhaps someone from csri or Holt software
could comment.  A Turing (proper) interpreter for MS-DOS is $60 CDN
and is distributed by Holt Software of Toronto.



