Agree, having to do maths and programming as an engineering student sucks as much as having to do surveys as a whatever social science student. That is one of the things I was glad I did not have to do when I saw some of my Political Sciences friends spending time surveying people for a project. Some of them enjoyed it but I know I really was not made for that stuff.
And, about the math and programming? as you said, it is really nice if you like it. If you do not like it then it means you DO NOT LIKE YOUR DEGREE and maybe should consider changing to another one.
I had a similar problem with several of my CS professors (I was a CS major.) I complained to my adviser I couldn't understand them, but he said that I should basically be more sympathetic since they probably had a tough time understanding me as well. I was shocked by this; I'm the student..
Are you scouser by any chance?
Because I have had some scouse students (and English not being my native tongue) and it is *really* difficult to understand them. I understand your adviser. He is not telling you to make anything extraordinary, just to take it easy on them. Shit, I have always find it so incredible how several native English speaking people just get pissed off if you don't speak perfect English, when they can not speak any other language.
if I don't understand what the prof is saying, I fail.
No, if you do not understand what the prof is saying, you just ask him again, and if you are in class, you just go to him sometime after class and rise the specific issue you did not understand. It is not that difficult. And they do not bite.
Yeah, and while doing that, the license should enforce advertisers to state "buy this dead tree with some spilled ink forming specific glyphs which we are licensing for you to see but not to reproduce"
Because you know, when you obtain a dead-tree book, you are just buying the paper, but the content is still not yours.
I was amazed at the number of fanboi's that modded it off-topic, only to have it modded it back up, then back down again
Moderation +4
50% Insightful
20% Interesting
20% Informative Try again.
, Mac OS seemed alien and unintuitive. And the software had funny names,
Haha, that made me laugh. Funny names, as opposed to Hardy Heron, Gutsy Gipsy, amaroK, Pidgin... and those are just on the top of my head. What is the problem with iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, GarageBad?? you can pretty much guess what are they about just with the name? ask anyone in the street "if there was a program called amaroK, what do you think it will do?" haha... they would surely tell you it was some sequel from Turok or whatever.
BTW, I do not use Macs, proud Win/Lin user since I have memory...
In the article, the author describes several uses he had when using Kubuntu. I have had similar issues, but all is reduced to the fact that Kubuntu is a hack "KDE-patched" version of Ubuntu. When you use Kubuntu after using Ubuntu you can "feel" that it seems as they just threw the kde libraries and desktop into the Ubuntu distro. There are a lot of integrity issues. Particularly I have also had the wireless network issue, while it is working flawlessly in Ubuntu, Kubuntu is a complete mess.
But that does not mean that KDE is better or worst than Gnome, if you use a KDE-oriented desktop (such as SUSE or Mandriva) which have KDE preconfigured out of the box, the experience will be different...
It might not be as bad as it seems. If the RIAA know that certain University is taking measures that they find acceptable to fight copyright violation, then they might think of saving time and money by not going against people in such University...
In slightly different things, I found quite interesting the info you have in your page about OurStage. I know several people here know about emusic and other places but I have never heard about OurStage and I think it is good to let people in slashdot know about it:). Thanks for the recommendation.
20 years later, and all of that has completely vanished. One generation later and none of that is to be seen, and I doubt if there's some corporation today that has such an extensive benefits package on what once were excellent benefits but were considered within the norm.And the thing is, some of those benefits didn't add up to that much monetarily, but they did at least give the impression that the company took extra steps to take care of you.
The funny thing is that, all that extra trash became some of the extra cash payed by the company to you. If they don't give you kid science toys anymore is because the majority of the employees prefered higher salaries (i.e., more money) so that they could buy whatever toy they wanted for their kids. Or what about guys who did not have kids? bad luck for them, they did not get those "extras".
As other people said, you my friend are smoking something really overkill.
I have Ubuntu on my laptop, I installed 7.04 and made it work as fine as I could (i had to buy a separate wireless card because the one that came with the laptop did not work... that did not happen in Windows).
When I upgraded to 7.10, the 3D graphics acceleration which was working with the free x.org drivers in 7.04 just broke up. There is no freaking way in hell to make it work. And I spent two weekends (saturdays AND sundays) trying to make it work, including asking in the oh so good ubuntu forums. My questions just get ignored.
So yeah, Ubuntu could do it, Microsoft could do it to, and better than Ubuntu or any Linux distro. But it does not happens.
Now, please pass that shit you are smoking, it really seems to be good stuff.
Call me weirdo but I prefer Lady Grey to Earl Grey. Having said that, before living in the UK I would have never thought of drinking tea with milk, however it seems this is the standard way of drinking it here (i.e., if you ask for a cup of tea in a restaurant they will give it to you with milk unless you ask it "black"). Personally I liked the taste, however I can not drink it too much because I am allergic to dairy. But milk in tea is not as bad as it seems.
You should better go with a real statistical analysis package. Even for those kind of things in the long term it will be easier for you and they are more robust.
When I started my PhD I used Gnumeric for several statistical analysis however, after spending some time I had to learn to use a real statistical package. I went for R, which is very well known an accepted through the research community (mainly because it is the open version of S, and can be scrutinized). After using it for about six months I found it better to make even the most simple statistical analysis on it. Oh, and the charts really look professional. No matter what I did in Gnumeric (tried once in OpenOffice but its graphics capabilites simply suck \BBBbig Time), I could not obtain decent charts to add to a LaTex publication.
I would suggest rKward to use R. it is the best IDE (IMO, after trying several and trying and failing to setup several others).
One of the most important advantages of using a statistical package like R is that you can get it to output to standard output in a console. That way you can use whatever scripting language you know (I used GAWK, sed, and other bash niceties) to prepare your data to be included in whatever word processing/typsetting program you need. It really saves a lot of time.
I really think it should be Sir Arthur C. Clarke. While I am not very fond of those nobiliary titles, I think he is one of the few that really deserve to be named as such.
How cool it must have been for him to see so many of his visions turn into reality!
That reminds me a quote from Asimov (you know, the other second-best Science Fiction writer in the world). I think someone asked him why didn't he fly (by plane) to which he answered something along the lines of "why would like like to go in a cramped plane to get at 12,000m when I can go to other planets and universes in the comfort of my seat at home?
These guys were genious, and visionaries.
I won't get tired of writing Rest in Peace Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Does anyone find it funny that, from all the places, Slashdot provides a link the MSNBC news site? you know, like MSNBC as in MicroSoft... I mean, having all those resources and for this kind of event.
I will use your introduction of the product of the SciFi-fantasy writer Ron Hubbard to remember that Asimov along with Heinlein distantiated from John Campbell (one very famous Science Fiction editor) when he started getting into the weird Hubbard's ideas, and publishing his psyche related novels (not Science fiction but more fantasy)...
That goes to show that not all science fiction writers gave left good things to humanity.
Oh and for those that are saying Science Fiction is a promoter of real science, there is an anecdote of John Campbell being visited by the FBI because in a story in "Astounding" magazine, because they got the details of the atmoic bomb very clear... Also, Asimov was a PhD in Chemistry, he based his psychohistory in the theory of gases, stating that you can not predict the specific path of a particle but you can predict the overall movement of a big set of them (or somethin like that... IANAC).
Ahh... another of the few great Science Fiction (straight real Science Fiction no SciFi and things like that) leaves us. I have always been more of an Asimov fan, but as they both used to say, I will certainly miss the two, second-best science fiction writers in the world...
Too bad these they do not make Science Fiction writers as they used to...
Hey, you left out my fateful Nigerian friend, son of the late Mr Ribadu A Daigo who suffered from a cancerous disease. How else would I be able to obtain my millions of dollars... I am now just waiting for my friend to transfer them to me, after I gave them my credit car details and a deposit for transaction costs.
I will step to put a bit of perspective on this flamefest and tell you something I heard somewhere (unfortunately I can not site but someone here will certainly correct me). The paraphrased quote went something like this:
"The difference between Americans and British is that Americans believe their country is wonderful and is the best one in the world while the reality is that it is terrible. On the other hand, Britons are always bitching about their country without realizing their life is actually pretty good".
I can tell you from my experience in the UK (I've lived in the UK for about 4 years, coming form Mexico) is that you people over here have it really easy. Shit, people can just stop working and the government will pay them money. "spare some change mate?" you see people selling the "big issue" and then they go to cash their check to get beer. That is being poor in this country. Let me tell you, you do not know what the fuck you are talking about.
For people in the UK life is really easy right now. It is, really. You have a hell lot of things which you take for granted. You whine that you can not get a free dentist. Oh shit, but you do not see that in other countries and in other times (even in your country) there is no free NHS even for a freaking Nurse.
So as other people already said, stop whining and go back to fucking work you lazy ass.
Nobody thinks their precious little snowflake is going to...
And that is what is fucking wrong in the UK. You see, kids in the UK are fucking crazy, they are, they are criminals! they are criminals because of two things. First, parents do not give a shit about their kids, and if their kids do something stupid, parents only laugh and say "ooooh look what little Johnny did! he is so cute" the fucktard, and secondly because they have some kind of immunity because they are younger than 18.
I know because a lot of friends (people that have come to the UK either to study PhDs or to do Research Assistanships... heck even my supervisor!) got attacked by those assholes. They shot a friend with a pellet gun while he was in his cycle, guess what? my friend got hit in the eye and he had to stay home for about 2 weeks.
Another friend got hit by a rock. And just last week a friend was walking when some of those fucktard kids pushed him (a 16 year old english guy usually weights a fucking lot) and he BROKE HIS LEG... now my friend is in the hospital waiting for an operation.
And what can all they do?? fucking nothing, because if you do anything to the motherfucker kids, they will go crying to their paps and the police and you will get deported because you are the adult that offended a poor kid. No fucking shit.
Or if you go with "the law" and go to the police, the most these assholes will get is an "ASBO" what is an Asbo you ask? well is just an antisotial behaviour order for which some of them get a bracelet and some indications (shit, one 10 year old kid got an ASBO indicating that he could not SMOKE DOPE! and I am not shitting you). And according to what I have heard, read and seen (in some videos of some of the kiddos wannabe gangs that they upload to youtube) these guys collect the fucking bracelets, for they it is a status sign, the more they have the "cooler" they are.
What these fuckers need is some freaking good punches and kicks. But even their parents can not do anything because they get accused of "family violence". So yeah fuck, the result is that the kids do not have any sort of respect for their parents, for other people and for society in general.
And that is what is wrong with kids in the UK these days. No fucking amount of DNA and databases will correct them. What they need to do is make the parents accountable for the kids criminal actions. If a kid hit someone in the street or assaulted or whatever, make the parent accountable as if he was the one doing the action, and punish him (the parent) as an adult with all the power of the law. You will see if parents do not start putting more attention to what their kids do./rant yeah, you can tell I am very much angry at those rats. In the four years I have been living in the UK these small shits seem to be the scum of the society here. They have too much free time.
Easy, he is a physisist, FORTRAN is (or was?) the typical language used for simulation. Assembler is sometimes used when you need to program certain toys (devices) to do your experimentation and Visual Basic because remember, when it was first presented it was touted as the language for the people that did not want to program. I suppose he learnt it with the intention of using it for some high level interfaces and whatnot algorithms.
Nowadays he would use Java or C++ (although being a non-programmer I think he would prefer Java). But I presume at the time when he was researching his field, that was what was available.
Slashdot Mirror
Howdy shit yeah, now that Sony has a monopoly over Blu ray, just sharing that monopoly with
* Acer Corporation
* Alpine Electronics Inc.
* Asahi Kasei Microsystems Co., Ltd.
* Ashampoo GmbH & Co. KG
* Bandai Visual Co. Ltd.
* BASF AG
* Basler Vision Technologies
* BenQ Corporation
* B.H.A. Corporation
* Bose Corporation
* B&W Group
* The Cannery
* Cheertek Inc.
* Cinram Manufacturing Inc.
* D&M Holdings, Inc.
* Daewoo Electronics Corporation
* Daikin Industries, Ltd.
* Daxon Technology Inc.
* Degussa
* Eclipse Data Technologies
* Elpida Memory, Inc.
* ESS Technology Inc.
* Expert Magnetics Corp.
* Fujitsu Ten Ltd.
* Funai Electric Co., Ltd.
* GalleryPlayer Media Networks
* GEAR Software
* Hie Electronics, Inc.
* Hoei Sangyo Co., Ltd.
* IMAGICA Corp.
* INFODISC Technology Co., Ltd.
* Infomedia Inc.
* Intersil Corporation
* Kadokawa Holdings Inc.
* Kaleidescape, Inc.
* Kitano Co., Ltd.
* Konica Minolta Opto Inc.
* Laser Pacific Media Corp.
* Lauda Co. Ltd.
* Lead Data Inc.
* LEADER ELECTRONICS CORP
* Lenovo
* Linn Products Ltd.
* LINTEC Corporation
* M2 Engineering AB
* MainConcept AG
* Mitsumi Electric Co., Ltd.
* Must Technology Co., Ltd.
* MX Entertainment
* Netflix Inc.
* NewTech Infosystems Inc. (NTI)
* NEXAPM Systems Technology Inc.
* Nichia Corporation
* Nikkatsu Corporation
* NTT Electronics Corporation
* nVidia Corporation
* OC Oerlikon Balzers AG
* Omnibus Japan Inc.
* Onkyo Corporation
* Online Media Technologies Ltd.
* Ono Sokki Co., Ltd.
* OPT Corporation
* Orbit Corp.
* Origin Electric Co., Ltd.
* Osmosys SA
* Pinnacle Systems
* PoINT Software & Systems GmbH
* Pony Canyon Enterprise
* PowerFile
* Primera Technology, Inc.
* Quanta Storage Inc.
* Realtek S
Agree, having to do maths and programming as an engineering student sucks as much as having to do surveys as a whatever social science student. That is one of the things I was glad I did not have to do when I saw some of my Political Sciences friends spending time surveying people for a project. Some of them enjoyed it but I know I really was not made for that stuff.
And, about the math and programming? as you said, it is really nice if you like it. If you do not like it then it means you DO NOT LIKE YOUR DEGREE and maybe should consider changing to another one.
I had a similar problem with several of my CS professors (I was a CS major.)
I complained to my adviser I couldn't understand them, but he said that I should basically be more sympathetic since they probably
had a tough time understanding me as well. I was shocked by this; I'm the student..
Are you scouser by any chance?
Because I have had some scouse students (and English not being my native tongue) and it is *really* difficult to understand them. I understand your adviser. He is not telling you to make anything extraordinary, just to take it easy on them. Shit, I have always find it so incredible how several native English speaking people just get pissed off if you don't speak perfect English, when they can not speak any other language.
if I don't
understand what the prof is saying, I fail.
No, if you do not understand what the prof is saying, you just ask him again, and if you are in class, you just go to him sometime after class and rise the specific issue you did not understand. It is not that difficult. And they do not bite.
Yeah, and while doing that, the license should enforce advertisers to state "buy this dead tree with some spilled ink forming specific glyphs which we are licensing for you to see but not to reproduce"
Because you know, when you obtain a dead-tree book, you are just buying the paper, but the content is still not yours.
50% Insightful
20% Interesting
20% Informative Try again.
, Mac OS seemed alien and unintuitive. And the software had funny names,
Haha, that made me laugh. Funny names, as opposed to Hardy Heron, Gutsy Gipsy, amaroK, Pidgin... and those are just on the top of my head. What is the problem with iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie, GarageBad?? you can pretty much guess what are they about just with the name? ask anyone in the street "if there was a program called amaroK, what do you think it will do?" haha... they would surely tell you it was some sequel from Turok or whatever.
BTW, I do not use Macs, proud Win/Lin user since I have memory...
In the article, the author describes several uses he had when using Kubuntu. I have had similar issues, but all is reduced to the fact that Kubuntu is a hack "KDE-patched" version of Ubuntu. When you use Kubuntu after using Ubuntu you can "feel" that it seems as they just threw the kde libraries and desktop into the Ubuntu distro. There are a lot of integrity issues. Particularly I have also had the wireless network issue, while it is working flawlessly in Ubuntu, Kubuntu is a complete mess.
But that does not mean that KDE is better or worst than Gnome, if you use a KDE-oriented desktop (such as SUSE or Mandriva) which have KDE preconfigured out of the box, the experience will be different...
you could go ask at ExpertSexChange.com if you are curious...
It might not be as bad as it seems. If the RIAA know that certain University is taking measures that they find acceptable to fight copyright violation, then they might think of saving time and money by not going against people in such University...
:). Thanks for the recommendation.
In slightly different things, I found quite interesting the info you have in your page about OurStage. I know several people here know about emusic and other places but I have never heard about OurStage and I think it is good to let people in slashdot know about it
Since 1999, making you an offer you can't refuse.
20 years later, and all of that has completely vanished. One generation later and none of that is to be seen, and I doubt if there's some corporation today that has such an extensive benefits package on what once were excellent benefits but were considered within the norm.And the thing is, some of those benefits didn't add up to that much monetarily, but they did at least give the impression that the company took extra steps to take care of you.
The funny thing is that, all that extra trash became some of the extra cash payed by the company to you. If they don't give you kid science toys anymore is because the majority of the employees prefered higher salaries (i.e., more money) so that they could buy whatever toy they wanted for their kids. Or what about guys who did not have kids? bad luck for them, they did not get those "extras".
at Ubuntu could do it
As other people said, you my friend are smoking something really overkill.
I have Ubuntu on my laptop, I installed 7.04 and made it work as fine as I could (i had to buy a separate wireless card because the one that came with the laptop did not work... that did not happen in Windows).
When I upgraded to 7.10, the 3D graphics acceleration which was working with the free x.org drivers in 7.04 just broke up. There is no freaking way in hell to make it work. And I spent two weekends (saturdays AND sundays) trying to make it work, including asking in the oh so good ubuntu forums. My questions just get ignored.
So yeah, Ubuntu could do it, Microsoft could do it to, and better than Ubuntu or any Linux distro. But it does not happens.
Now, please pass that shit you are smoking, it really seems to be good stuff.
Call me weirdo but I prefer Lady Grey to Earl Grey. Having said that, before living in the UK I would have never thought of drinking tea with milk, however it seems this is the standard way of drinking it here (i.e., if you ask for a cup of tea in a restaurant they will give it to you with milk unless you ask it "black"). Personally I liked the taste, however I can not drink it too much because I am allergic to dairy. But milk in tea is not as bad as it seems.
You should better go with a real statistical analysis package. Even for those kind of things in the long term it will be easier for you and they are more robust.
When I started my PhD I used Gnumeric for several statistical analysis however, after spending some time I had to learn to use a real statistical package. I went for R, which is very well known an accepted through the research community (mainly because it is the open version of S, and can be scrutinized). After using it for about six months I found it better to make even the most simple statistical analysis on it. Oh, and the charts really look professional. No matter what I did in Gnumeric (tried once in OpenOffice but its graphics capabilites simply suck \BBBbig Time), I could not obtain decent charts to add to a LaTex publication.
I would suggest rKward to use R. it is the best IDE (IMO, after trying several and trying and failing to setup several others).
One of the most important advantages of using a statistical package like R is that you can get it to output to standard output in a console. That way you can use whatever scripting language you know (I used GAWK, sed, and other bash niceties) to prepare your data to be included in whatever word processing/typsetting program you need. It really saves a lot of time.
I like microwave pizza. Does that make me stupid?
Yeah, everybody knows a real researcher's diet consists of instant noodles.
I really think it should be Sir Arthur C. Clarke. While I am not very fond of those nobiliary titles, I think he is one of the few that really deserve to be named as such.
How cool it must have been for him to see so many of his visions turn into reality!
That reminds me a quote from Asimov (you know, the other second-best Science Fiction writer in the world). I think someone asked him why didn't he fly (by plane) to which he answered something along the lines of "why would like like to go in a cramped plane to get at 12,000m when I can go to other planets and universes in the comfort of my seat at home?
These guys were genious, and visionaries.
I won't get tired of writing Rest in Peace
Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Indeed thanks for that...
Does anyone find it funny that, from all the places, Slashdot provides a link the MSNBC news site? you know, like MSNBC as in MicroSoft... I mean, having all those resources and for this kind of event.
I will use your introduction of the product of the SciFi-fantasy writer Ron Hubbard to remember that Asimov along with Heinlein distantiated from John Campbell (one very famous Science Fiction editor) when he started getting into the weird Hubbard's ideas, and publishing his psyche related novels (not Science fiction but more fantasy)...
That goes to show that not all science fiction writers gave left good things to humanity.
Oh and for those that are saying Science Fiction is a promoter of real science, there is an anecdote of John Campbell being visited by the FBI because in a story in "Astounding" magazine, because they got the details of the atmoic bomb very clear... Also, Asimov was a PhD in Chemistry, he based his psychohistory in the theory of gases, stating that you can not predict the specific path of a particle but you can predict the overall movement of a big set of them (or somethin like that... IANAC).
Ahh... another of the few great Science Fiction (straight real Science Fiction no SciFi and things like that) leaves us. I have always been more of an Asimov fan, but as they both used to say, I will certainly miss the two, second-best science fiction writers in the world...
Too bad these they do not make Science Fiction writers as they used to...
Hey, you left out my fateful Nigerian friend, son of the late Mr Ribadu A Daigo who suffered from a cancerous disease. How else would I be able to obtain my millions of dollars... I am now just waiting for my friend to transfer them to me, after I gave them my credit car details and a deposit for transaction costs.
Las Vegas vacations. here I go!!
I will step to put a bit of perspective on this flamefest and tell you something I heard somewhere (unfortunately I can not site but someone here will certainly correct me). The paraphrased quote went something like this:
"The difference between Americans and British is that Americans believe their country is wonderful and is the best one in the world while the reality is that it is terrible. On the other hand, Britons are always bitching about their country without realizing their life is actually pretty good".
I can tell you from my experience in the UK (I've lived in the UK for about 4 years, coming form Mexico) is that you people over here have it really easy. Shit, people can just stop working and the government will pay them money. "spare some change mate?" you see people selling the "big issue" and then they go to cash their check to get beer. That is being poor in this country. Let me tell you, you do not know what the fuck you are talking about.
For people in the UK life is really easy right now. It is, really. You have a hell lot of things which you take for granted. You whine that you can not get a free dentist. Oh shit, but you do not see that in other countries and in other times (even in your country) there is no free NHS even for a freaking Nurse.
So as other people already said, stop whining and go back to fucking work you lazy ass.
Nobody thinks their precious little snowflake is going to...
/rant
And that is what is fucking wrong in the UK. You see, kids in the UK are fucking crazy, they are, they are criminals! they are criminals because of two things. First, parents do not give a shit about their kids, and if their kids do something stupid, parents only laugh and say "ooooh look what little Johnny did! he is so cute" the fucktard, and secondly because they have some kind of immunity because they are younger than 18.
I know because a lot of friends (people that have come to the UK either to study PhDs or to do Research Assistanships... heck even my supervisor!) got attacked by those assholes. They shot a friend with a pellet gun while he was in his cycle, guess what? my friend got hit in the eye and he had to stay home for about 2 weeks.
Another friend got hit by a rock. And just last week a friend was walking when some of those fucktard kids pushed him (a 16 year old english guy usually weights a fucking lot) and he BROKE HIS LEG... now my friend is in the hospital waiting for an operation.
And what can all they do?? fucking nothing, because if you do anything to the motherfucker kids, they will go crying to their paps and the police and you will get deported because you are the adult that offended a poor kid. No fucking shit.
Or if you go with "the law" and go to the police, the most these assholes will get is an "ASBO" what is an Asbo you ask? well is just an antisotial behaviour order for which some of them get a bracelet and some indications (shit, one 10 year old kid got an ASBO indicating that he could not SMOKE DOPE! and I am not shitting you). And according to what I have heard, read and seen (in some videos of some of the kiddos wannabe gangs that they upload to youtube) these guys collect the fucking bracelets, for they it is a status sign, the more they have the "cooler" they are.
What these fuckers need is some freaking good punches and kicks. But even their parents can not do anything because they get accused of "family violence". So yeah fuck, the result is that the kids do not have any sort of respect for their parents, for other people and for society in general.
And that is what is wrong with kids in the UK these days. No fucking amount of DNA and databases will correct them. What they need to do is make the parents accountable for the kids criminal actions. If a kid hit someone in the street or assaulted or whatever, make the parent accountable as if he was the one doing the action, and punish him (the parent) as an adult with all the power of the law. You will see if parents do not start putting more attention to what their kids do.
yeah, you can tell I am very much angry at those rats. In the four years I have been living in the UK these small shits seem to be the scum of the society here. They have too much free time.
Nice... maybe in 10 years we will really be able to do something like The Thirteenth Floor
That is sweet!
Easy, he is a physisist, FORTRAN is (or was?) the typical language used for simulation. Assembler is sometimes used when you need to program certain toys (devices) to do your experimentation and Visual Basic because remember, when it was first presented it was touted as the language for the people that did not want to program. I suppose he learnt it with the intention of using it for some high level interfaces and whatnot algorithms.
Nowadays he would use Java or C++ (although being a non-programmer I think he would prefer Java). But I presume at the time when he was researching his field, that was what was available.