Re: Looking for a good Ada 95 book

["S. McLain" <JSMCL-endny@worldnet.att.net>]

jim hopper wrote:
> 
> In article <dewar.848785112@merv>
> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> 
> > Best guess is that jim has not taught a CS1 course. I often find that
> > computer professionals GREATLY overestimate what is appropriate to teach
> > at this level. Teaching anything about programming and abstraction is
> > very hard -- I agree with everything jim says, but it is NOT an appropriate
> > excercise in a first semester course in programming, which is what we are
> > talking about here!
> 
> No i taught physics to a lot of freshmen, but not cs-1. :-)
> I agree my perspective is different as i have to deal with the products
> of the CS courses :-)
> 
> BUT i was not suggesting that first year students be taught a variety
> of styles in the first year.  What i was suggesting is that if you am
> going to teach, over a four year degree, a number of styles, with a
> goal of breaking students of the habit of assuming their first method
> is the one true way, does it REALLY matter which of the several styles
> you want to address over the four years comes first??
> 
> best jimGentlemen, 

As an earth science student, I forced myself to take computer science even though it was 
not required.  I rebelled as much as I could against styles imposed upon me by my 
instructors.  I would not (and will not) flow chart anything(or create diagrams).  Also, 
I only added comments to avoid failing the class.  I look back at the code I wrote to 
help me in the major and can't understand a thing.

--Back to the point, now that I am beginning to teach myself Ada, I follow the industry 
standard style guide.  My reserved words are always lower-case, and my identifiers have 
beginning caps.  I even write a few comments.  As far as the reserved word caps or lower 
argument is concerned, lower-case makes sense.  How many reserved words must we learn?  
Not many.  What gets confusing and what should stand out are the identifiers that we 
come up with ourselves.  They change with every new application written.  

Students should be taught the standard style for the particular language they are 
working with, but perhaps not penalized too heavily for their stylistic errors.  They 
should be rewarded for producing programs which work and which have source code that 
their PEERS can follow.
skip mclain