Re: Are 'best' universities being targeted for Ada9X

[math.fu-berlin.de!dww@uunet.uu.net (Debora Weber-Wulff)]

Now Greg, let's think a bit clearer about the choice of first-year 
CS language. It would, of course, be nice  to teach a language
that would be useful throughout the time spent at university and
would be beneficial as a job-getter. With the PAL getting in
gear the chances of finding good stuff to use in upper level
courses have increased. [When I showed the PAL list to my
colleagues they were quite impressed -  now we have to go buy
a new disk to put the stuff on, but whatever :-)]

One of the reasons we should be choosing a first language is
to pick one which will shape the way in which these young
persons think. It is sort of a mother tongue that we are teaching.
[I have seen people program FORTRAN in Pascal, BASIC in Pascal,
Pascal in C - the first language you learn often seems to you
to be the *right* way to do things.]
So because we think that a disciplined approach to creating
software is a GOOD THING, we feel that the students should be
learning a language like Ada that *won't let them hack*.

Now Ada's not perfect, but now that I know the corners to avoid
for beginners (FIXED!) I can see that it a quite good teaching
*and* a very good production language. I used to be an Ada-Hater
(brought on, I believe by C.A.R. Hoare [That's *Tony*, not
*Charles*, Ted!] and his Turing lecture), but I do like it now.

And since I just tell my students: We are doing programming in an
object-based manner, the majority are quite content to learn. I
even had a C hacker come up to me at the end of the term and say
"Gee, Ada's a pretty neat language, even if it is such a pain in
the *censored* to type!"

As you note, Greg, we forget the *details* of what we learn in the
first few years of college. But the *way of thinking*, the 
programming habits that are cultivated in those years will stay
around and influence all of our future work!  

The reason for the "best" schools not using Ada, IMHO, is that they
are research-oriented (i.e. getting external funding by hacking
something for industry) and thus do not give thought to didactical
reasons for anything. The schools you mentioned using Ada are indeed
*teaching* schools, dedicated to actually teaching people 
instead of letting them sink-or-swim.



-- 
Debora Weber-Wulff, Professorin fuer Softwaretechnik 
snail: Technische Fachhochschule Berlin, FB Informatik, 
       Luxemburgerstr. 10, 13353 Berlin, Germany
email: dww@informatik.tfh-berlin.d400.de