Re: Teaching C/C++ from Ada perspective?

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

> After having spent some years with Ada, I'm relecutant to "throw away" my good programming habits from Ada and embrace C/C++.

There is absolutely no reason to throw away your good habits. On the contrary, your good habits (no matter where you got them from, Ada or elsewhere) will be very useful when teaching C++ (or whatever else).

> I would like to know if there exist(s) good book(s) at introductory level for C/C++ that may go in the spirit of Ada

No and there should not be any, just as there are no introductory books teaching Ada in the spirit of C++. This would be pointless, as the spirits of different languages are different and forcing one language into the spirit of another one is counterproductive.

Having said that, you might think that the two answers above are contradictory. They are not, because they refer to distinct aspects.

Ada is strong in directing the user towards a good program structure. Pick this and try to show your students how to design the program in C++ using the tools that it has - namespaces and classes. The notion of packages in Ada do not map 1:1 into namespaces and classes in C++, but the big picture of encapsulation and program decomposition translates well. Show them how the physical structure of translation units in C++ can be used to enhance encapsulation. Show them how to use templates. Use the standard library whenever you can. Stay away from raw pointers as long as you can (which might as well be forever).

Now, I take the risk of being controversial here, but I have enough C++ experience to stand by my words: don't bother implementing your own broken version of integer ranges in C++, no matter whether with macros or with templates. Just don't. If you try to do this, you will teach your students something that they will not be able to reuse or translate in the real world, in the real existing code. You will be blamed afterwards for the bad teaching and you will have nothing to defend yourself. Just don't. It is true that some attempts have been made in this direction, but none got any recognizable acceptance. C++ is not the language for doing ranges and I'm not sure whether this is entirely bad - don't confuse them with range-checked arrays, which are available in the standard library and are (and should be) used. In the same spirit, don't get obsessed too much on defining gazillion of incompatible types for everything, as some Ada books insist on. Classes as separate types are good for medium to big design concepts, but not for micromanaging integers. Don't bother with reimplementing Ada in C++ at this level and you will be successful in your teaching.

> so that I won't feel wasting my time and energy teaching C/C++?

It works the other way round. If you don't accept this position, your time and energy will be wasted, because you will not be able to pass your good habits to C++ students. Somebody else will pass their bad habits instead. Surprise.

> Also I will start the above course with Algorithms in which I have little knowledge. Any suggestions for good books on this topic?

There are plenty of algo books that base their presentation on C++. Another surprise.

-- 
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.inspirel.com