Re: Where is the elusive jump command?

["Marin D. Condic" <mcondic-nospam@quadruscorp.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> I disagree, noone teaches goto's in any beginning programming
> courses, for good reasons. Anyone desparately wanting to write
> gotos has a peculiar starting point.
> 
I agree. However, I rather got the impression that the original poster
was an experienced programmer who was used to doing things a particular
way based on what other languages normally do. I wouldn't teach gotos as
an introductory style, but if a Fortran weenie wanted to know how it was
done in Ada, I'd show him and advise him that there were better ways.

> As for terminating strings with null, that really does not work
> in Ada for many reasons, the models of strings are very very
> different in C and Ada, and trying to gloss over this will be
> a disservice.
> 
Again, I agree wholeheartedly. I've seen too many C programmers come
over to Ada and try terminating strings with null, pass parameters with
addresses, etc. Essentially they are fighting the language and making
their lives harder. However, I would at least point out to them that
what they are used to doing can be done with Ada, but that again they
are fighting the language and making their lives harder. I just think
that Ada gets a bad rap and gets ignored because someone used to C
programming starts going "Well, I can't do in Ada the kinds of things I
usually do, so Ada is useless."

> As for pointers, I would NEVER tell people about *aliased* until
> they understood the language well.
> 
Certainly *aliased* anything is a concept best left for the experienced
programmer and should not be an intro-level topic. It depends on the
audience though. If you've got an experienced C programmer who wants to
learn to use Ada to interface to the Win32api, you need to discuss this
topic. All the while emphasizing that it should be used judiciously,
hidden at low levels in the case of bindings and that generally Ada
programs don't do this kind of thing because it has better ways.

> You just confuse people by introducing features that are
> unnecessary and will lead them in the wrong direction.
> 
We do have to be careful not to confuse the newbies. We should try to
emphasize The Ada Way of programming. I just think we'll win a few more
converts by being willing to say "Yeah, you can do exactly what you
usually do in language X and here's how. But there is a *better* way to
consider that will make your life easier."

I know we have the same objective. The tricky part is how best to get
there.

MDC
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