Re: Ada in teaching (was: Ariane 5 Failure from 1996)

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.tsoh.plus-bug.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de>]

John B. Matthews wrote:

> I always though going from Pascal to Ada would have been easier.

Which subset of Ada?  Without exceptionally good explanations,
I can't imagine full Ada, with access discriminants, say, as
a possible teaching vehicle at all.

Java is probably thought to be closer to business;
at least I've heard teachers say so. It is,
in another sense, at least: sloppy base type systems
and hand made concurrency are a good basis for
continued support business.  While Java's int, long, etc. only
require a little hubris to handle them properly, there are the
ubiquituous features of the same spirit, equally successful:
int, long, etc. in C and their integer overflows and buffer
overflows.
These will provide for vulnerability protection opportunities
and help establish international software companies :-)
Java has learned from this base type system, so it
moved the imperfections to object spaghetti. No?

You should be teaching what everyone wants.
You should be teaching what everyone teaches.
You should be rushing towards a new paradigm
in teaching as soon as it is there.
Be part of the crowd. It's only tax payers' money.