Re: How should DoD further Ada education?

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <1991May30.183159.7820@netcom.COM> jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter) writes:
>>I also would suggest that DoD sponsor in-house workshops on Ada (perhaps in May
>>and June) to faculty in many departments at universities.  That includes MIS,
>>Computer Science, *** Engineering, Mathematics, etc.  This could also be
>>accomplished at a relatively low cost.  

For your info, AJPO sponsors the annual Ada Software Engineering Education 
and Training (ASEET) Symposium each summer or fall. This year it's in the
DC area in September. The papers and panels focus on most of the areas you
list below, Jim. (Plug: I happen to be the keynote speaker this year).
The conference fee is minimal. 

Originally the ASEET team _did_ come to a university upon request to do this
kind of workshop. The team members were mostly uniformed officers with
technical credentials (often MS and PhD degrees in CS). In the last few
years I don't think they've had many requests, also money is thin. Last
year there was no conference; there was such an outcry that the conference
is back with AJPO's full support.

>Good point. These workshops should discuss a number of things, but a few
>I think deserve special emphasis are:

>1) Upward path from Pascal to Ada--language can be learned in series of
>   easy steps, no step particularly difficult. Separability of language
>   features into manageable subsets (e.g. ignore tasking, fixed point
>   types, etc at outset).

You bet. Many of the Ada "trainers" have ignored this and approached Ada in
terms of how DIFFERENT it is, which threw a lot of students and teachers off
stride. It was hard to find the substance in all the hype. Indeed, I think
it was the OO folks that were the biggest offenders here (I won't name names,
but I'll bet Showalter can think of a few...)

>2) Overall symmetry of language definition (yes, I know--there are annoying
>   special cases and gotchas, but in GENERAL the language definition consists
>   of a small set of concepts and constructs reproduced in various contexts
>   [for example, parameters and arguments for subprograms, tasks, and generics
>   all have basically the same syntax and semantics]).

Absolutely right! Most of the books out there just follow the LRM and
don't focus on things like this. 

>3) Suitability for advanced CS classes (e.g. data structures, concurrency)
>   and as vehicle for teaching software engineering.

>4) Resources (e.g. quality textbooks, course materials, cheap compilers
>   [should be FREE compilers...]), reusable libraries and repositories.
>   Conferences, seminars, periodicals, significant papers, professional
>   societies. SEI.

I will post separately a list of CS-oriented Ada books. There are more than
some of you may think.

>5) Success stories from actual educators who use Ada in their classes
>   (stories should span variety of applications, from CS-1 to multi-person
>   graduate projects of significant size and complexity).

This is just the kind of thing Rich Pattis is doing with his "school profiles"
appearing in each issue of AdaLetters. And what he, John McCormick, Jim Smith,
and I did in the SIGAda booth at the SIGCSE conference in March.

>6) De-mythification of the DoD "taint"--stress European origin, international
>   peer review process, limitation of DoD's role to mostly providing the
>   funds (as opposed to designing the language itself) and validating the
>   compilers.

I quite agree. This is one reason I don't think DoD is necessarily the right
organization to push this. SIGAda's various groups are better, I think,
because they are at least moderately independent of the defense community.

>Other things that might be good to discuss:

>1) European academic interest in and involvement with Ada (Ada seems to be
>   more popular with academics in Europe than in the U.S.--this might lend
>   it some legitimacy as an academic topic in the eyes of U.S. academics).
>   Current areas of research.

I don't think Ada is significantly more popular in the European universities,
at least not according to the data Rich and I are getting from our surveys.
Europe has fewer universities, though. Australia is really into Ada.

>2) Success stories of Ada in COMMERCIAL sector, including internationally.
>   Emerging viability in Japan and Europe.

The CAUWG meetings at Ada conferences try to press this point. I agree that
CAUWG and AdaIC ought to work harder to get the word out beyond the borders
of the Ada community. They preach to the choir a lot.

>3) Comparisons of various metrics between Ada systems and comparable systems
>   written in other languages; cost factors, business advantages.

For non-mandated projects, this would be subsumed under (2).

>4) Job prospects for new graduates with Ada experience.

Always a good incentive. On the other hand, the Ada crowd was telling us years
ago that our students would never find jobs if they didn't know Ada. This
was hype then, and it still is. Ada knowledge surely doesn't hurt, though!

This thread is getting really interesting. I look forward to more.

Mike
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Prof. Michael Feldman
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 U.S.A.

phone 202-994-5253
fax   202-994-5296
email mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu
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