Re: Ada: A beginners experience

[Bill Findlay <findlaybill@blueyonder.co.uk>]

On 14 Jul 2018, Jere wrote
(in article<6febe5d6-0339-4da5-afe5-9af4e2255597@googlegroups.com>):

> On Friday, July 13, 2018 at 11:36:51 PM UTC-4, Paul Rubin wrote:
> > This won't be a popular viewpoint here but IMHO Ada isn't a great choice
> > as a first language. [...]
>
> [...] The type system (the big draw for me to Ada) is actually very streamlined. [...]
>
> None of this is beginner friendly though obviously.

I disagree very strongly with the idea that Ada is not a good beginners 
language, and I
do so as a result of the experience of introducing an Ada-based CS1 course in 
1996.

Most of its advanced features will never arise in such a course, and the good 
design
of Ada means that beginners are very unlikely to stumble upon them by 
mistake.

The Ada course replaced one based on Pascal, and the improvement in outcomes
was clear at an early stage. Ada is easier for beginners than Pascal, because 
its
syntax and semantics are more consistent. In fact, it's just amuch better 
language.

It was interesting to stand in the lab and watch Ada-based and Pascal-based 
beginners
working side by side. One day, about week 6 of term, the Ada studentshad 
nearly all
successfully written a program that 2-D animated balls bouncing around in a 
box.
The Pascalstudents were grappling, mostly unsuccessfully, with a trivial 
text-based
read-process-output loop.

-- 
Bill Findlay