Re: Teaching (was: Why don't large companies use Ada?)

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <3b9s34$m58@cleese.apana.org.au>,
Andrew Dunstan <andrew@bugalugs.apana.org.au> wrote:

>But your attack is wide of the mark. Languages should be used in teaching for
>their pedagogic values, not for their application in industrial use. I happen
>to think that Ada is well-suited to both purposes, but let us at least make
>the distinction clear. If students can be taught good programming practise
>with one tool, then picking up another language should be a snap. I don't even
>remember how many computer languages I have written in - I lost count somewhere
>in the 'teens.

Bingo.

We are tending more and more to blur the distinction Andrew points to,
and this is a real problem. I happen to agree that Ada is a good choice
for both purposes, and I think most teachers who have given Ada an honest
try in recent years have tended to agree. Many of the students do too.

In any event, majors in computing disciplines must be taught to keep
their minds open and ready for change, because whatever they are learning
now (especially in coding-level languages) is guaranteed to be pretty
out-of-date in ten or twenty years when our freshmen will be at the
height of their careers in industry. Any computing curriculum that
lets majors get away without strength in at least two languages and
some exposure to a few more, is cheating its students. 

It is very difficult to compare an apple; students need a frame of 
reference. They get this only by seeing several apples, or even some apples 
and some oranges. 

What I find most unsettling about the movement to teach C (or C++) in
the first year is _precisely_ that C/C++ is "needed in later years".
Wait a minute: if this is so, where will the students get the other
apples and oranges? Two weeks of a language in a comparative-languages
course is _not_ enough.

Most of us who are doing Ada as an _intro_ language are interested in 
starting our students off with what we think is the "right" mindset,
namely the development of robust and portable software.

We justify Ada as an optimal choice for this purpose, with the explicit
intention that students will learn other languages as they advance.
We hear anecdotal reports that students who start with Ada make
very good C and C++ programmers later on; there are a few stories
"out there" suggesting that industry recruiters are starting to agree.

Even if Ada were more industrially popular, I know of nobody that
would push it as the _only_ language their majors should learn well.
(And I know most of the Ada-in-first-year teachers...)

The strange and baffling part of the C-in-first-year movement
is its justification _not_ as the best first-year language but as the
language the students will need later. In fact, I've met a lot of
teachers who _explicitly_ say "well, C (or C++) is _not_ the best
intro language but the students need it later, so we'll do it as a
first language." In seeking a single-language model for their
curricula, these teachers are IMHO doing serious damage to their
students' ability to cope in industry in later years when C and C++ 
are old hat.

I'd be much more comfortable with the C-family-in-first-year movement
if a number of teachers rushed forward to tell me how their students
were learning several languages well, starting from the strong first-year
pedagogical basis of C and C++. I have not yet observed such a rush.
Perhaps I will at some point, but I'm not holding my breath.

Cheers -

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
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