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

[Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com>]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2018 10:10:00 -0700 (PDT), kouaoua16@gmail.com declaimed the
following:

>
>The course is too start with Algorithms first and then end with programming. Perhaps this is counterintuitive as students will then tend to learn the Algorithms part by heart. But if I start with programming first and move on to Algorithms, then students will better understand the logic of the presentation. What is your opinion?

	Ideally, algorithms should be language agnostic... Basic conceptual
building blocks: sequential statements, branching (if/else; switch/case --
I'd try to avoid goto), functions/procedures (or in ancient FORTRAN terms:
function subprograms and subroutine subprograms); data structures: arrays,
record structures, linked lists (in my day, taught by using static arrays
with tags for the index -- no dynamic allocation in FORTRAN-IV), hashes
(for my data structures class we had the assignment of implementing a
hashed head multiple-linked list "phone directory" -- we were allowed to
use any language the instructor was familiar with [so no SNOBOL or APL, and
no C in 1979 Sigma CP/V, just FORTRAN IV, COBOL, Assembler, BASIC -- maybe
UCSD Pascal if one had access to the two LSI-11s]; on a whim I used BASIC,
chain-loading functionality as the BASIC only permitted four open data
files at a time). 

	Converting an algorithm to an implementation language is a different
matter from understanding algorithms. And if these are truly beginners, you
probably don't have time to introduce object-oriented analysis/design
(which should also be language agnostic -- you later map what the design
comes up with into the features of the implementation language). Which
likely also means that the OO features of C++ will barely be touched...


-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
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