was one hint given and repeated at the ecoop workshop on "pedagogies and tools". anyhow, for my taste the discussion was to much circled by uml.

somehow the talks let me recall an oopsla question from 2005: what is the least understood thing in computing ... i didn't do so, but i guess if i would have asked, they would have told me: oop, at least that's what their presentations suggest. maybe i overdraw and the thing they actually wanted to tell me was just: it's the teaching, it's hard to find good non-misleading examples to explain. they tested students and practitioners alike. yet their sample rate is not that big, retesting is missing and you can question the setup in general. yet, that was somehow their message in a nutshell. kind of depressing setup. also as an answer to the problem was uml, a modelling tool. for me it is a business modell more than everything else, for sure i wouldn't identify it as something that would help me to understand. so far nobody could convince me otherwise. it's in wide use, was one and probably honest answer. call me old fashioned, i prefer storytelling.

marc roper was presenting a test they were doing with their students in relation to the work of saeed dehnadi and richard bornat, the latter call

a test which divides programming sheep from non-programming goats | the camel has two humps.

what's missing all three say are viable mental models of fundamental programming concepts.

with so many new personal computers being announced and the prices coming down rapidly, isn't the best bet to wait a year or so to buy a system? we think not. a pundit once observed that there are three kinds of people in the world: 1) those who make things happen, 2) those who watch things happen and 3) those who wonder what happened. | creative computing can help you select the best computer and get the most out of it

recommended: The Future of Computer Technology by deanna j. dragunas about arthur c little's forecast from 1974, written for the us airforce, but more importantly about the efficient use of future data processing capabilities, and Personal Computers

pc may now prove to be less expensive than time-sharing" | adapted by b. horn and p. winston, 1975

ibm's defense in the antitrust case can be read as an source par excellence for the european and japanese computer market in the early 1970s.

in a nutshell, then, what's bad for IBM international these days is good for IBM's defense in the U.S. government's antitrust suit | w. david gardner, 'ibm's defense' datamation, march 1974

in court ibm attorneys talk about "the club", a term also used in some eu papers, missing an explanation, though. in general they are not very descriptive, if you don't know the time and its players.

the court, i know, said [thomas] barr [ibm's lead attorney], is aware of the 'cartel system' ... there is an organization known as The Club, to which Control Data belongs, to which International Computers of England, which is a company substantially owned by the British government, belongs, ...| same source as above

the unidata venture was another european attempt to combat ibm. (siemens, germany; philips, netherlands; cii, france); actually it was ill-fated, but maybe of use for ibm at the time.

another thing to consider is the shortage crisis of energy, that influenced development, not just in europe. one answer to conserve energy was the "three day week". advanced memory system (ams) in silicon valley did it:

we have four shifts, each working 12 hours a day for three days. the result has been encouraging as ams has thus obtained 20% more facility time without any increase in energy consumption. | to conserve energy, datamation, 1974

as the world well knows, current U.K. regulations give the office world normal lighting and heating just three days a week while they struggle through the rest of the time wearing warm underwear and huddling near windows or peering through the light of lamps run on camping gas. | u.k.'74, michael blee, datamation

if you were working with computers, you didn't have the hurdle to deal with camping gas, those companies have been granted "special position" by the government.