Re: Re-Marketing Ada (was "With and use")

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

While I agree wholeheartedly with your belief in what a University ought 
to be about, there is often a big difference between what ought to be 
and what is. Too many university professors these days would happily 
quote Pontius Pilot: "Truth? What is Truth?".

That said, I don't think that your arguments - while very well founded - 
are likely to gain traction on their own. There is a need to change the 
perception that Ada is a dying language before profs (or anyone else, 
for that matter) are going to regain any interest in using it. They are 
likely to look at your arguments and respond that these same qualities 
are available to a greater or lesser degree in other languages that are 
*new* and *going somewhere*. Ada has to offer them something fresh and 
new or they won't want to tie their careers or those of their students 
to a technology that is perceived as being on the way out.

MDC

Chad R. Meiners wrote:
> 
> Well first of all the point of a computer science degree is not to prepare
> you for industry.  If you want to be prep'ed for industrial use, go to a
> technical college, it will suffice.  Now I am not saying that universities
> do not prepare you for industry, but I am saying that university programs
> have (and should have) concerns other than satisfying the demands of
> industry.  In short, the point of a university degree is to develop your
> mind; teaching you a trade is secondary.  I will admit that it is easy to
> find professors that have lost touch with this objective.  Furthermore, I
> will admit that collaboration between universities and industry can have a
> very positive effect.  However, the fact remains that the stated goals of
> universities are to discover truth and to develop minds.  (Can you tell that
> I have had this argument before ;-)
> 
> That being said, I agree that the main reason computer science faculty
> resist teaching Ada is that they believe it to be a dying language.
> However, I believe that we have a good sellable argument for the language
> with the following pedagogical reasons:  (This is off the top of my head.
> Please feel free to add more to the list.)
> 
> 1. Ada is subsetable.  Initial student will start out with a small but
> workable subset of Ada.  As the student grows and develops so can the subset
> of Ada.  When teaching new concepts (such as OO programming, or
> multi-tasking programs) new features within Ada can be introduced and added
> to the subset.
> 
> 2. Ada compilers produce helpful and informative compile errors.  Ergo, it
> is easier to spot and correct misunderstandings about programming and
> software development and such detection usually happens earlier.
> 
> 3. Ada is versatile.   Ada contains enough features to properly facilitate
> any type of computer science course.
> 
> 4. Ada is designed via the method of least surprise.  This allows the
> professors to concentrate on programming issues as opposed to programming
> language issues.
> 
> The problem is to convince the professors that the above benefits overweight
> the benefits of using old lecture note about a language that they already
> know.
> 
> Note that I don't think that universities should not teach C/C++ or any
> other languages.  They should of course offer them as programming language
> courses.  But also as has been expressed many times before in this
> newsgroup, learning a second language is not nearly as difficult as learning
> the first one.   Learning Ada as a first language really helps students
> absorb programming concepts faster.  (These are my observations; I wish we
> could do a study on this since such a conclusion would be wonderful press
> for Ada ;-)
> 
> 


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Marin David Condic
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