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Date: 21 Oct 91 17:44:48 GMT
From: netnews.upenn.edu!uofs!guinness.cs.uofs.edu!beidler@rutgers.edu  (Jack Be
idler)
Subject: Re: Why ADA is not prevalent yet?
Message-ID: <10284@platypus.uofs.uofs.edu>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Sorry, I can't hesitate any longer, thought I would add my two cents to this di
scussion.  It
should be pretty obvious by now that there is no one reason why Ada has not tak
en off.  I am
surprised at one reason that has not been mentioned, namely, how the Dod/AJPO f
olks seemed to
go out of their way in the early eighties to turn undergraduate computer scienc
e educators 
off to Ada.

Let me be specific.  I recall attending an ACM SIGCSC conference where a person
 from AJPO came
and tried to shove Ada down everyone's throat.  I know it turned a lot of facul
ty off to Ada.
As Mike Feldman likes to tell us, less than 2% of all colleges and universities
 use Ada in
any meaningful way in their computing instruction.  SO why isn't Ada taking off
!  One reason is
that more than seven years ago many faculty were turned off.  

Fortunately, I had an opportunity to give Ada a real chance.  When I saw what I
 was missing, I
made the switch.  Perhaps that is where we must begin, by providing other facul
ty the 
opportunity to see what Ada can do.  

The only question is: Whose going to pay for it?  One modest solution would be 
the support of
summer programs given by faculty who primarily teach UNDERGRADUATE courses for 
faculty who
primarily teach UNDERGRADUATE courses.  
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  John (Jack) Beidler				                              |
|  Prof. of Computer Science  Internet (VAX/VMS)  BEIDLER@JAGUAR.UOFS.ED      |
|  University of Scranton     Internet (SUN/UNIX) BEIDLER@GUINNESS.CS.UOFS.EDU|
|  Scranton, PA 18510	      Bitnet   (VAX/VMS)  BEIDLER@SCRANTON            |
|                                                                             |
|          Phone: (717) 941-7446	 FAX:   (717) 941-4250                |
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