At 5:04 pm -0600 30/1/01, <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>This data is dated Spring 2000:
>http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada-foundation.html .  It lists 19 U.K
>Universities that use Ada in Computer Science programs.

Very out of date. It includes my university and we stopped teaching
Ada as a 1st language 3 years ago and moved to Java. I know that the
same is true for several other UK universities on the list.

>
>With one exception, I haven't heard of any recent  books, aside from Ada
>textbooks, which use Ada as an example language (i.e. no "Numerical Recipes
>in Ada") .  At one point there was a compiler textbook that used Ada as
>well as a few data structure books, among others.  The recent exception is
>Michael Scott's excellent "Programming Language Pragmatics" published by
>Morgan Kaufmann last summer.  It gives Ada at least as much attention as
>C++, Java, Eiffel, and several other languages.  See
>http://www.mkp.com/books_catalog/catalog.asp?ISBN=1-55860-442-1


Thanks - I haven't seen that one.

>
>Perhaps a relevant paper is "Bandwagons Considered Harmful" at
>http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigada/education/pages/bandwagon.html .  I can
>understand switching from Ada to Java if you believe it will help sell more
>books.  The reality is it probably will.  However it you truly believe that
>Ada is a better language it would be good for you to say so in the preface
>or epilogue. It might help start an Ada bandwagon :-).

I never think that there's much point in trying to stop bandwagons of
this type. People are now realising that Java has severe limitations
but we won't turn the clock back to Ada.

Regards

Ian

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