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Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:42:41 +0200
From: Georg Bauhaus <rm.tsoh.plus-bug.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de>
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Subject: Re: Ada in teaching
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Date: 2009-07-15T01:42:42+02:00
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John B. Matthews wrote:

> Why use a subset at all? Surely the novice can write useful 
> programs that use a library, even if that library depends on access 
> discriminants for it's implementation. Using access discriminants 
> for one's own self-referential data structures and iterators can be 
> deferred to a second level course.

Could there be "canonical Ada" good for teaching?
Some subset possibly extracted from successful
introductory courses/books.  Such as, maybe, John English's?
(Does someone know whether Robert Dewar's plan still exists to
collect (his) teaching efforts at NYU into a book on Ada?)

> In version 1.5, Java added a generic form of compile-time type 
> checking [1]

Norman H. Cohen (author of "Ada as a Second Language")
has been involved in designing Java generics (Don't
know more).
Java arrays cannot fully take advantage of Java generics,
in particular compile time checking is basically off,
so the sloppy base type system strikes again.
Another language corner case that I imagine must be explained
to students of the (Java) language at length...

> and task oriented support for concurrent programming 
> [2].

Yes, task *oriented*...  (BTW, Microsoft is currently both
working on and advertising the Task Parallel Library
for  .NET 4.0.)
Doesn't Brinch Hansen's critique still apply, or can
libraries really replace language when it comes to
concurrent programming?