Re: Marketing Ada

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

In article <3cflgt$h3q@news1.delphi.com>,  <tmoran@bix.com> wrote:
>Michael Feldman remarked that many women see C as 'macho'.  That raises
>the question of what are the demographic or personality similarities and
>differences between current Ada and C* users.  Seems to me that any
>marketing campaign should have that sort of information.

I think I'd better explain that remark a bit better. A female colleague
gave me a copy of a set of free-firm responses to a question sent to
the "systers" mailing list, which is an e-mail discussion group for
women in computing. The question, as I recall, was mainly aimed at
teachers, and was something like "do you think that C turns off your
female students." 

I think the context was the never-ending discussion in
CS education circles about whether C should be taught as a first
language. The question, then, was whether C as the _intro language_
would effectively discourage females from entering CS.

It was an interesting angle on the problem of righting the balance
between men and women in CS; it had never occurred to me that this
might be a factor.

The results were free-form, untabulated, with the names and affiliations
removed. It was clear from the wording that the messages came mostly from
teachers and advanced students. To oversimplify the results, the
split of opinion was roughly 50-50 on the issue. The responses ranged
from "not a problem" to "the C hacker culture is a turnoff to women."
The emphasis seemed to be in the C culture, not on the language.

I don't want my remarks to be misquoted or taken out of context.
I also don't intend any of this as flame bait; I'm just reporting
on some stuff I read. This was an informal, e-mail survey, not a 
market study. That as many as half the respondents agreed with the
premise "The C culture turns off many female students" was an
interesting, if anecdotal, result. It served to strengthen my 
conviction that, whatever C is appropriate for, is is not an
appropriate first language. But I "knew" that already.

So what does this have to do with Ada?  I have two close female
colleagues who are part of our group teaching a lot of undergrad
courses. One has taught Ada at CS2 level a number of times; the other
has not. Neither one is an Ada evangelist, but neither is especially
opposed. They are both quite outspoken, and if either one believed
that the Ada culture was a turnoff to female students, I'd hear
about it pretty fast. 

I have heard no such thing. Indeed, I've taught Ada many times at CS1 
and CS2 levels, and find that, if anything, my female students (and 
my male ones) come to appreciate the robustness and portability of
their Ada code, and really like the idea that Ada is in use in
critical systems that affect their lives - commercial aviation
especially, but also high-speed rail and other day-to-day domains.

I have mostly my own and my colleagues' experience to go by, no
"market study" or anything like that, but - whatever problems Ada
faces in gaining wide acceptance - one we don't have to worry about
much is the "turns off females" issue.

If anyone in net-land is a systers member, you might ask that
group to describe their perceptions of Ada, as a teaching language,
and in general. The results would, I think, be very interesting.

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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