Re: Grabbing Mindshare in the Student Population for Ada

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

When I started teaching Ada at Naval Postgraduate
School, the number of students enrolling for the
class was so low it was not guaranteed there would
be a class.

With the help of a friendly professor who had been
there for a long time, we were able to put together
enough for one class.

After that class, students began to tell other students
about how much fun Ada was.   We are ever so
gradually making progress at increasing mind-share,
as the caption put it.

My class is called, Ada As A Second Language, so the
students have almost all suffered through the horrors
of C++ by the time they get to me.    The sign on my
office door says, "C++ Is Its Own Virus" and few
of my students disagree with that sentiment.

Just today, one of my students from the electrical engineering
curriculum said how much he was enjoying Ada.    I have even
been able to persuade some students to use Ada for their
Master's Degree Thesis.

At lunch today, with a group of Marines from one of my other
classes, and one Marine visitor, the visitor mentioned how
some project was being converted from Ada to Java.   I said,
"That's a pretty stupid decision."    He asked, "What would be
better?"   I replied, "Ada 95."  He said that everything he had
heard about Ada was pretty negative.    This is an indication
that there is still a lot of ignorance out there in the decision
loop.

We can, if we teach Ada well, grab some mind-share.  However,
if the students are confronted with negative attitudes when they
try to use Ada (or recommend Ada) once they have graduated,
it is pretty discouraging.    On the bright side, some of my
students will be in decision-making jobs when they graduate,
and they may be able to help turn the tide of stupidity that
characterizes so many programming language decisions.

If you can teach Ada well and help the students enjoy it, all
the better.   I am seeing the results of teaching it badly in
so many places.

By the way, I expect to have an update of my little booklet,
Ada Distilled, available for free download sometime in the
next couple of weeks.   I have been getting great feedback on
it from all over the world.    Apparently it has become useful
for a lot of people who are trying to learn Ada on their own.
I will announce it here when it was on adapower and adaic.org.

Richard Riehle