From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,aa8786249f0c751f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: "Gene" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How difficult is ada to learn? Date: 30 Jun 2005 11:38:16 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1120156696.672010.281140@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> References: <1120092264.749327.16210@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <1120141150.107320.139080@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <42c40313$0$32193$39cecf19@news.twtelecom.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.190.181.85 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Trace: posting.google.com 1120156702 28378 127.0.0.1 (30 Jun 2005 18:38:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 18:38:22 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <42c40313$0$32193$39cecf19@news.twtelecom.net> User-Agent: G2/0.2 Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com; posting-host=216.190.181.85; posting-account=ZFTPUQ0AAABW8AYEou9RtrBd-zTxz0_y Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:11769 Date: 2005-06-30T11:38:16-07:00 List-Id: Thanks! You're absolutely right that sets are less of an issue than strings. I overstated by saying "most people." My reference point is undergrads in CS1, where small things can make a difference. You perfectly illustrated what I meant. The overloaded plus constructor is quite idiomatic. In Pascal, set construction just happens. So students who know sets as an early exercise in Pascal do a doubletake when they try the same in Ada. This mysterious-looking plus pops up, and they must dig in to figure out operator overloading and parameterized types in order to do what used to be self-evident. This isn't a bad thing, but it does cause them to "miss" Pascal sets. Best regards, Gene