On Wed, 7 Feb 2001 [log in to unmask] wrote:
"Colin

>From your comments, it would seem the lecturer is a bit more than misinformed!

As far as object orientation is concerned, it would be worth making sure he is
given the chance to read Ben Brosgol's paper comparing the object-oriented
features of Ada 95 and Java. With respect to the Rendezvous, it would be worth
making sure he reads Ben Brosgol's paper comparing the concurrency and real-time
features of Ada 95 and Java.

Both of these papers are locatable through the AdaPower web site, but I guess
Ben could probably provide you with copies directly."

One of the two seems to be
HTTP://WWW.ACM.org/pubs/articles/proceedings/ada/289524/p175-brosgol/p175-brosgol.pdf

Well since I seemed to remember one of the ones you referred to (but
actually I seem to have been thinking of a different Ada and Java article
in Ada Letters) I went to the Ada Letters website and am quite annoyed
that the March 2001 issue is already out before my supposedly airmailed
(and the airmail is sent to the U.K. and then sent by surface mail to
the other addresses in the E.U. -- and I well know that the U.K.'s surface
mail is terribly slow) December 2000 issue has arrived (I'm aware that the
December 1999 hardcopies were delayed due to an issue relating to the CDs
but no such mention has been made of the December 2000 issue).

It does not look as if I'll persuade the people here to feature Ada in
prescribed material. And to let you know just how influential I should be:
last year before repeats there was a failure rate in the order of 60%,
after the repeats in the order of 30%. Of those of us here now, we are
piloting a new streaming of what was once a single degree into three: just
nine people are in my degree (and one has been thinking of
transferring) -- the only degree "theoretical" enough for us to bother
learning many languages.

"Furthermore, I would suggest discussing his comments with his
superiors. As you probably know, lecturing to students is often only a
small part of a faculty member's duties and in certain cases they seem to
think it is not very important, preferring to concentrate on their own,
money making, research work. It sounds to me like you've got one of these."

One of these lecturers or universities? He does have research areas but I
think that I can truthfully say that he does deem lecturing important. As
for the university, it reputedly has the best programming degree in the
country, at least as viewed by employers who like the business sense
graduates from here apparently have. I was and still am displeased that I
and my teammates had to pay for us to go to the regionals in the IBM/ACM
International Collegiate Programming Contest (held in another
country) with absolutely no renumeration from our university; but at least
we got inconsistent responses on how a team should be formed and why we
won't be backed.

I think that I could do without the hassle of gettting at least one of us
into trouble.

">Yesterday he claimed that Java is object based because a Java program must
>use classes (sic) but that C++ is object oriented because you can ignore
>objects altogether and just use C (sic).

He clearly appears to be talking out of his arse here!

Make sure he reads Ben Brosgol's papers, and speak to his superiors.

John"

I did blind carbon copy my first mention in this thread of him to him but
he didn't respond.
Colin Paul