TEAM-ADA Archives

Team Ada: Ada Programming Language Advocacy

TEAM-ADA@LISTSERV.ACM.ORG

Options: Use Classic View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Condense Mail Headers

Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Content-Type: text/plain
Sender: "Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95)" <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Brashear, Phil" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 16:00:27 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Reply-To: "Brashear, Phil" <[log in to unmask]>
Parts/Attachments: text/plain (104 lines)
For CS2:
Main and Savitch, Data Structures and Other Objects Using C++ (Addison
Wesley)
Dale, C++ Plus Data Structures (Jones and Bartlett)

They're out there!
We're using Dale at the University of Dayton (where I teach part time).

Phil

Philip W. Brashear
Software Quality Assurance
EDS Corporation
+1.937.237.4510
[log in to unmask]



-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Beidler [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 3:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: generics in Java


Regarding Terry Westley wrote:

> Some people should read the literature for design of other languages.
> Or, perhaps they just need to escape the NIH (not invented here)
syndrome...
>
> >From <http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2769630,00.html>
>
>         Generics is controversial and has been widely debated inside and
outside of Sun.
>         Gosling said the concept is so complicated that no two developers
could agree on
>         exactly how it should be implemented. He and Sun Chief Scientist
Bill Joy "got as
>         close to physical violence as we've gotten," he said, because Joy
wanted to slip
>         Java for two or three years until Sun figured out generics.
However, developers
>         converged on an answer about two years ago, and then Sun waited
while the issue
>         wended its way through the Java Community Process. Gosling said
reliability is
>         critical to Java because it raises developer productivity,
allowing them to
>         "spend less of their lives fixing broken applications."
>
> --
> Terry Westley
> [log in to unmask]

It is a shame that the idiots in charge of Java don't have enough brains to
look at the
generic/template models of Ada and C++.  I am currently working on a couple
of papers with
two of my colleagues on Java's lack of template/generic capabilities. One of
my colleagues is
a C++ guy and we have been comparing Ada generics and C++ templates with an
eye towards how
we might like to see a generic/template feature implemented in Java.

The issue is much deeper than that.  How many students go through an
undergraduate program
with any real software reuse experience (I can see it now, I am about to get
flamed).  People
seem to claim as software reuse experience by just throwing any crap they
want into a library
and presto they are doing reuse.

Granted, there are some pretty good libraries out there in C++ and Java, but
I just did a
survey of CS 2 and CS 7 (Advanced data structures and algorithms) texts
using C++.  Would you
believe that I could not find one book that uses C++ templates to
encapsulate the basic data
structures?  If one of you know one, let me know.

Now keep in mind that just about all the Java book for these courses are
"global replaces" of
the various author's C++ books and you can see that we are facing a
generation of programmers
who have been raised on C++ and Java and have no real clue as to how to use
a
generic/template for the construction of reusable software!

If the software industry is in trouble now, I have a pretty good clue where
it is going to be
in the future as more and more schools dumb down there CS programs.

Jack Beidler
--
John (Jack) Beidler, Ph.D., Professor of Computer Science
Computing Sciences Department
University of Scranton
Scranton, PA 18510
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Voice: (570)941-7774  FAX: (570)941-4250
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web:   http://www.cs.Scranton.edu/~beidler

ATOM RSS1 RSS2