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Jack Beidler <[log in to unmask]>
Mon, 23 Nov 1998 11:22:57 -0500
text/plain (35 lines)
Regarding:  Samuel Mize wrote:

> On the button for education:
>
>   Ada: teach good habits for any language

I second this one.  This has been precisely our experience.  After
seeing Ada in two courses, our students take our operating system course
using C.  We do not teach them C, they pick it up during the first
couple of weeks in the Op. Sys. course.  The first time we did this, I
was concerned about the transition because the guy who teaches OS did
not know Ada.  His experience was:

1.  The students ask the right questions, like "How do I package in this
language?"
2.  They use variable names that are more than two letters long.
3.  They do not abuse the ++ operator.
4.  They write readable C programs.

The problem is:  How do we move this discussion to the general CS
education community?  Given GNAT and AdaGIDE, we have about the best
programming language and environment for CS1/CS2.  How do we get others
to give it a fair shot?  I've taken the time to do some serious
programming in C, C++, and Java, and find it terribly frustrating that
others have not taken the time to do the same with Ada.

Jack
--
John (Jack) Beidler, Ph.D., Professor of Computer Science
Computing Sciences Department, University of Scranton, Scranton, PA
18510
Mailto:[log in to unmask]     Phone: (717) 941-7774  Fax: (717)
941-4250
http://www.cs.UofS.edu/~beidler

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