From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,4871bb700d475964 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-06-07 09:48:00 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!denver-snf1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!coop.net!newsfeed1.global.lmco.com!svlnews.lmms.lmco.com!news1.lmtas.lmco.com!not-for-mail From: Gary Scott Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: an interested business-oriented programmer Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 11:20:02 -0500 Organization: LM Aeronautics Message-ID: <3B1FA9B2.F5D98BD0@lmtas.lmco.com> References: <9flodm$6jb$1@nh.pace.co.uk> <3B1E7320.5E21BB4F@lmtas.lmco.com> <3B1EAAB4.5C86F53D@lmtas.lmco.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: CAA261517.lmtas.lmco.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en]C-CCK-MCD {C-UDP; LMTAS} (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:8330 Date: 2001-06-07T11:20:02-05:00 List-Id: Hi, Ted Dennison wrote: > > >If you want to get STUDENTS trained in Ada, then you've got to make it > >easy for them. They're NOT going to accept a basic command line tool > >set environment to any great extent (sure a few 'geeks' will). > > After my recent stint as a graduate student dealing with undergrads, my fear is > that you are absolutely right here. The students I dealt with were totally lost > without VisualStudio, even the sharper ones. > > Still, I'd think you are doing students a great disservice if they never learn > how to use a compiler from the command-line. Sure, the high-level stuff is > pretty, and can automate some simple tasks. But they should't graduate thinking > that everything under their GUI is magic. They shouldn't be afraid of having to > learn to use different tools. I totally agree and am appalled by some of our new hire inabilities or at least severe discomfort level at using command line tools. I've always been comfortable in the extreme (compared to my engineer coworkers) with command line based computing. > > I find it amusing that you seem to be using "geeks" above as a synonym for > "people who really know what they are doing". That's fine, as it goes ("geeks" > is certainly shorter). But shouldn't we be teaching students to really know what > they are doing? If not, what good is the degree? (I'm sorry, this isn't your > issue. Its a separate one. I'll shut up about it now.) Well, I guess that was my intended meaning of "geek", of which I consider myself one (even if no one else does). It certainly wasn't an insult. But when you're building market share, you need to be concerned about a broad spectrum of interest levels. Raising the "general consciousness level" is needed, and so is having a product being actively marketed in the "mass media" or at the very least, the top software catalog sources. You cannot just focus on the UNIX crowd or on some Green Hill's OS customers. You need to make Ada "sexy". Get them hooked, then force feed them the "horrible" details about command line processing beneath the hood. > > Another often-neglected fact it that Emacs actually serves quite well as an IDE > for Gnat. The only thing that's kind of a pain is adding directories to the > project search path (there's good support for it, but no "browse" or filename > completion to help with the task). To top it off, Emacs can do tons of things > that most other editors can't. Most other Windows Ada compilers also have some > kind of IDE (usually a bit more graphical than emacs, but also less powerful). I use Kedit myself. There are several Emacs users in my group. I like to have fun with them by writing Kedit macros that outperform their beloved Emacs macros. At one point there was a team of 5 tweaking a macro trying to beat execution performance of one of my Kedit macros...didn't even come close, theirs taking upwards of 2 minutes on an HP Pentium 300 and mine taking about 7 seconds on a Micron P90. > > Perhaps there aren't any free VisualStudio clones out there that come with an > Ada compiler. But then VisualStudio itself isn't free either, is it? Nope, not free, not even close, but extremely popular by comparison to virtually anything in competition. > > --- > T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html > home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com