We present one approach to teaching basic computer science concepts with robotics, using an Ada interface to Lego Mindstorms™ 1 . We show simple problems put to students with no programming experience, discuss the solutions, and for each concept explain the advantages of using robots to teach it.

We present one approach to teaching basic computer science concepts with robotics, using an Ada interface to Lego Mindstorms™ 1. We show simple problems put to students with no programming experience, discuss the solutions, and for each concept explain the advantages of using robots to teach it.

We present one approach to teaching basic computer science concepts with robotics, using an Ada interface to Lego Mindstorms™ 1 . We show simple problems put to students with no programming experience, discuss the solutions, and for each concept explain the advantages of using robots to teach it.

An IEEE subcommittee on the standardization of microprocessor floating point arithmetic has a proposal under discussion. Part of that proposal concerns overflow and underflow exceptions. The proposal calls for a “gradual” underflow implemented with demoralized numbers. For a sequence of addition/subtraction operations, the gradual underflow works very well: it almost has the effect of a machine with infinite range numbers. But if an addition/subtraction sequence is interrupted by a multiply or divide, things don't work nearly as well, and a fallback to symbolic information is likely. The proposal helps overflow hardly at all.

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