Re: A Pascal Subset of Ada (was: Why Ada is Failing Socially)

[pattis@june.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis)]

In article <1822@stan.xx.swin.oz.au> doug@saturn.cs.swin.OZ.AU (Doug_Grant) writes:
>
>The issue is not whether subsets are allowed or not, but rather
>whether a compiler for the Pascal subset (whatever that is) could be
>used productively for a first course in Ada. Having taught Ada as a
>first language for 2 years now, to a diverse group of students of
>variable ability, I am convinced that a VERY CHEAP (or FREE) compiller
>for the Pascal subset that will run on the old 8088 machines that some
>Pascal) in the first course.
  Allow me to disagree. I have taught Ada in CS-1 and CS-2 to over a thousand
students. By week 15 my students have learned, and are using when they write
their programs: exception handling, unconstrained arrays, generic subprograms
and packages, private types, and operator overloading.  I will not discuss
the difficulties in creating a coherent and consistent Ada subset (such a
discussion has already appeared in this forum).

  Sure, an Ada subset compiler for an 8088 that is cheap is better than
nothing. But the availability of such a product would not support my
goals in teaching Ada. What is more important is the availability of
full Ada compilers that are as good and as cheap as as Pascal/C/C++
compilers for a wide variety of computing platforms.

  Of course, this all assumes that we want Ada taught at the undergraduate
level: this sentiment is not universal in the Ada community.

Rich Pattis

PS: When I taught Pascal and Modula-2 at this level, I always taught a subset
of these languages: the really important, powerful, and useful parts. I
continue this approach when teaching Ada.

-- 
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  Richard E. Pattis			"Programming languages are like
  Department of Computer Science	 pizzas - they come in only "too"
    and Engineering			 sizes: too big and too small."