Re: Teaching Ada types

[Mehdi Saada <00120260a@gmail.com>]

Le vendredi 17 avril 2020 08:17:45 UTC+2, J-P. Rosen a écrit :
> Well, the school taught the syntax of C, and then gave programming
> I asked: "but how did they teach you how to go from a problem
> statement to its solution?" She didn't even understand what I was
> talking about. Sigh...

I agree that it's still common (though NOT ONLY in programmation), this mindset: here's the tool, now build that damn wardrobe.
Bsically, I remember doing some basic exercices, ok, then the next one asks for a not-so intuitive leap in understanding, which leaves me angry.
Some people absolutely can not perform such leaps... for instance I'm Aspie, and if I've not been shown something, I will NEVER intuit it..
I've been told "open a logical/math book !"
Which there are a bunch of them with WILDLY different way of doing things, so the top-down "integrated" approach which would so be advised for any rigorous training, goes out the window.
I long for someone, saying: if you can't do that without even thinking, take the book X by Y (maybe chapter A to N), eat it, complete the exercises, and come back.
And that, for each point. For stuff like mathematical logic to high school algebra ? At least making sure that the reader knows it thoroughly before coming back to programmation per se.
It would need either that authors coordinate with each other a little bit, or for someone to know enough of the available materials available on the world wide web or otherwise, to sort it out.

It goes for higher stuff like functional programming, IA, etc. Instead of supposing the reader knows the prerequisites, how about making sure, by refering to other books to check it out ? I almost NEVER see that done. And the "hard to do in practice" is no excuse...

Sorry for the rant.