hello i am a student of computer sciencie. I started studing Ada 95 and
Haskell and I can say now that learning both languages had give me a globali
vision about programmig. I have worked before in C but it is not a good
language for begginers. If i were you, i will teach them Ada and Haskell....
Ada is powerful, structurated and easy (yeah...it's a great language) and
learning something about funcitional programming is good too. And haskell is
a language very easy. You can introduce them to programming with haskell and
then you can follow this with Ada.

Luck !!!


--
--
 Ignacio Robledo Rosell
 mailto:rrilpm@arrakis.es
 http://zipi.fi.upm.es/~g990406
 ****************************************
 "When code matters more than comercials"
 ****************************************

"chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> escribi� en el mensaje
news:R7RI6.461$EI.140779@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
> > > I can say that I am not a great friend of making shortcuts in the
education
> of
> > > future software engineers. IMHO the people starting with Java from the
start
> > > (in our current lab project, the profs are using lots of XP
techniques) try
> to
> > > introduce too much too fast (OOP from day one, etc.).
> >
> > With Java, you have no option but to introduce OOP quickly. Everything
is
> > a class in Java.
> >
>
> Which can make things more difficult than they need be.
>
>
> > > So, in your position I would look into Python (my favourite) or
Scheme. Or
> > > perhaps another functional language like Haskell (there is an
interpreter
> > > called Hugs).
> >
> > Why a functional language? I would think a procedural language would be
> > easier to teach as a first language, and would provide them with
framework
> > needed for the languages most programmings being done it.
> >
>
> If I had a choice i'd teach both an FPL (funtional language) and Ada 95 to
first
> timers.  Both styles are different but they have much to offer.  I think
they
> complement each other.  Also FP is being taught more and more at Uni and
it's
> more difficult to teach FP to people who've learned the imperative way
first.
> Any way this is largely irrelevant Ada would be best if you want to teach
IP
> first.
>
> > > 7th grade? Please don't throw a big language like Ada at them.
> >
> > Why? It seems more important to have a teachable subset (with Ada
> > subsetting very nicely) than to have the whole language be small.
> > I don't like the idea of teaching a limited language; first, it can
> > make examples in the language impossible (cf. _Software Tools_,
> > where the encryption routines were removed in the transition from
> > Ratfor to Pascal, because they couldn't be written in Pascal.)
> > Second, students are probably going to use what they learned first,
> > even when it's inappropriate. Note the number of Pascal and Basic
> > dialects; people were taught a limited language, and then extended
> > it to get the job done. Ada will expand with the learning of the
> > student.
> >
>
> I have to agree with you here.  The benefit of Ada was that you could
learn it
> slowly (by this i mean present a few constructs and build on them
gradually) and
> you can transfer the things you learn in Ada more easily into other
languages.
> I've mentioned this before but I had real problems with organising my
modules in
> C and Pascal, but after programmng in Ada for a few months when i went
back and
> tried to program in C i was able to organise the code better, as far as C
would
> allow.  While i'm not a beginner, i think this says something about Ada.
It
> promotes good software development practices.  This cannot be said about
Basic
> or indeed Java (it ties you to OOP even when it makes things over
complex).
>
>
> Chris
>
>