Hi, Everyone, To further the fuel of this particular fire, I've done a little more investigating into what is going on with VB use in the State University System of Georgia. My class at Kennesaw State University is not isolated by any means, and what I've observed is that a myriad of languages are used at each of the universities with VB, C++, Java, and Ada all in the running at all the schools I looked at. The language is chosen for each course for different reasons. Ada and VB seem to come up less than the others, with C++ taking a lead over Java based on my observations (nothing official here). The number of students is quite large in all cases (not Top-10 in number, but still large). Kennesaw State University has 900 CS students, Southern Poly has 1,400 CS students, and Georgia Institute of Technology (GA Tech) has over 1,000 CS students (not sure of the more accurate count). I've noted that GA Tech (which is the premier research university in the state) is offering a Software Engineering course to Juniors that promotes the use of VB in the course (altho the overview suggests any language, it recommends VB, and students in my class confirmed today that most GA Tech students they know about are using VB for this course). Here is the URL: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2000/cs3802_fall/index.html You might also be interested in the project details, where VB is mentioned: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2000/cs3802_fall/project.html Southern Poly (which is closest to Lockheed and is developing an on-campus offering at Lockheed) offers an MS in Software Engineering (the only such program in Georgia). Their primary language is C++ (as is evidenced by the Transition Courses including an OO course using C++). Here is the URL: http://lovelace.spsu.edu/csdept/msse.htm I showed my Freshmen today how to write a Web Browser. It took about 10 minutes, and some are taking it back to their jobs (the average age of our CS students is 29), creating their own custom Web Browsers. I created a custom Web Browser myself at Lockheed this week for possible use on my program (about 72 Software Engineers). The VB Web Browser will access the resources of our websites (whose 600M bytes of web pages are created in a variety of ways, using GWRL (written in Ada95 and available on the current ASE CDROM) and the CMM Level 4 Data Collection System (written in C and Perl), both of which I wrote). I suspect we will adopt the use of this Web Browser over the conventional Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers because its custom design allows us to implement features which integrate with custom servers on the website itself for enhanced ease of use and functionality, including greater access control. Also, maintenance is very low on it (I had to write only a few lines of code to implement it). One last note: my teaching load for next year is almost all in place for the first half of the year. It includes another course in VB at KSU (altho there is still a chance this will change to C++), two courses in Web Publishing at Lockheed, and one course in Ada95 at Lockheed. A course in Java at Lockheed is also possible, but not probable at this time. This teaching load is in addition to my "real" jobs as a Software Process Engineer (emphasizing the move to CMM Level 4 and 5 processes) and the LMAS representative to the LM Reuse/COTS Working Group of the LM Corporate Software Subcouncil. Rick ---------------------------------- Richard Conn, ASE and PAL Manager http://xenadu.home.mindspring.com/ > -----Original Message----- > From: Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95) > [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Robert I. Eachus > Sent: Friday, December 03, 1999 7:57 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: What the competition looks like > > > At 01:11 PM 12/3/1999 +1100, Geoff Bull wrote: > >"Richard L. Conn" wrote: > >> The VB controls > >> operate at such a high > >> level of abstraction that you don't have to worry about > >> the low-level details and can concentrate on the problem. > > > >Actually, I wonder if that's not part of your problem. > > I totally agree. When teaching Ada in a programming course, > I have found it is very gratifying to the students to be given a > package specification and a description of what they have to do > to implement correctly the body of the package. This completely > eliminates the need for the students to know anything about with > clauses, Text_IO, program organization, etc. to complete the > first few assignments. Two other advantages are that you can > provide decent diagnostics in your driver, so they don't have to > get into the debugger or for that matter exceptions. And second > you can write a grading program to make it easy on the > instructor. Some examples--I certainly haven't used all of them: > > Towers of Hanoi (works nicely as an intro to tasking...) > Runge-Kutta (great for engineers.) > Grammar recognizer (Finite state machines) > > Now obviously I haven't taught Ada at a CS1 level in > (hmmm...) 15 years, but for grad level course not directed at CS > majors it is great. Spend one hour on an intro to Ada (that > notes that a lot is delayed until later) and the students can > concentrate on the algorithms. > > > > Robert I. Eachus > > with Standard_Disclaimer; > use Standard_Disclaimer; > function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...