From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.6 (2021-04-09) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.6 Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!mRBVMlGoFUnDsRgMYRJiSw.user.46.165.242.75.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Richard Iswara Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Why "Hello World" as a first exercise? Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2021 13:17:46 +0700 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Info: gioia.aioe.org; logging-data="7297"; posting-host="mRBVMlGoFUnDsRgMYRJiSw.user.gioia.aioe.org"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@aioe.org"; User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.12.0 X-Mozilla-News-Host: snews://nntp.aioe.org:563 Content-Language: en-US X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2 Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:62448 List-Id: Why is it most of the courses of introduction to programming or programming language use a "Hello World" kind of program as a demo or first exercise? Why not do a proper input loop as a showcase or a first exercise? With an input loop procedure you get: 1. How to read and output an input. 2. Show the if-then-else structure. 3. Show the loop structure. 4. Show error messages and how to properly handle it. 5. On Ada in particular you are showing the type system. 6. If it is a subprogram then input loop shows how to do and call the subprograms. And last but not least it teaches and reinforces to the student how to think about safety in programming. So why a useless look at me, ain't I cool "Hello World"? Sorry I had to vent after an unsatisfying exchange over at arstechnica.