Re: An admittedly biased Ada/C++ comparison, by Ed Schonberg

[cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!hellgate.utah.edu!fcom. cc.utah.edu!val@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Val Kartchner)]

wallace@bonmot (Richard Wallace) writes:
: 1) The "Law of first exposure" is the first criteria that sets an end user's
: expectation of what to use as an implementation language.  The first exposure
: that a potential programmer has is an inexpensive system (IBM/PC, Mac) in
: high school (or at home) where the decision by the educational institution
: (individual) is to maximize silicon over software.  So what is the cheapest
: "real" language to use?  C of course (it used to be BASIC, remember?) because
: a compiler is $100's per site or free (remember Apple's give-away?)  versus
: $10,000's per site.  Next, if the student decides to attend university, the
: next system seen is the Unix or Unix-style O/S with the "de facto" C
: compiler, and if the University has sprung for a C++ compiler, that is
: available too (don't forget the Gnu project G++...).

Actually Pascal is used in more high schools as a teaching language than C.
My high school currently teaches Pascal (though they used to teach BASIC,
FORTRAN, and COBOL), and (to my knowlege) has never taught C (I have visited
a few times since graduating).  "The Law of First Exposure" would then
dictate that students would migrate to Pascal or a Pascal-like language.

At Weber State University, Ada is the required language.  However, it is not
the most popular.

"The Law of First Exposure" can also be generalized to mean that the order in
which computer programming languages are learned is the order of preference.
If this were applied to me specifically, then my most prefered languages
would be BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL.  This is definitely not the case.

What should actually be applied is "The Law of Only Exposure".  Many
programmers (unfortunately) only learn one language.  This makes discussions
about languages on technological merits difficult if not impossible.
Additionally, since most "programmers" don't know an assembly language,
they generally lack an understanding of what a computer actually does with/to
their HLL program.  Lacking this understanding makes it difficult if not
impossible to discuss efficiency issues.

Programmers need an understanding of language merits and efficiency to be
able to pick the right tool for the job.  So, programmers should know
several languages well.

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