Re: Looking for a good Ada 95 book

[Ray Toal <rtoal@cse.eng.lmu.edu>]

Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> 
> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:

> >If the lexical style is really sufficient reason to adopt or reject a
> >text, I'd say you're not reading for content...
> 
> Unfair.  Not reading *JUST* for content, maybe.
> Students in this part of the world use the style they were first
> taught, and if a later lecturer wants something different, they regard
> the _lecturer_ as incompetent and pedantic, and don't do it. 

My experience has been totally the opposite.  Students can adapt
easily to different styles.  When they get enough experience with coding
you can even have very useful discussions about the different styles
in regards to the importance of readability and consistency.
Consistency is a big deal - you wouldn't wnat to sprinkle lots of
underscores in C code because the standard library avoids them,
but you like to in Ada because its standard library is full of them.

I've never seen a student complain about formatting styles, but then
I've only been teaching 11 years.

By the way, I've said before, the content in Feldman's book is
first-rate and it's the best book I've seen, and the non-standard
formatting doesn't have to be a big deal at all.

Ray