Re: [Ada] made me hate programming

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

On 01.07.10 01:42, Peter C. Chapin wrote:

> All that said, I do think that many novice programmer's find compiler
> error messages baffling and largely unhelpful.

Yes. Technical messages can definitely be unhelpful, and frustrating
when learning how to program.  In fact, "unhelpful" and "frustrating"
are the two very qualities of communication that no teaching effort
can afford!  They are necessarily damaging.  Picture it this way,
among humans:

S, a student of some subject asks questions.
T, a teacher on the subject, understands the questions, or thinks he does.
Then T answers, but, to S, his answers are unhelpful and frustrating.
Because S simply cannot understand the answers, since they are full
of yet-to-be-learned notions.
T might say that the answers are correct.
So what?
This is not pedagogical!
The messages are incorrect if intelligibility of a message
is a measure of its correctness in a given situation.

"unhelpful" and "frustrating" will drive S away from the subject.
Depending on S's self-esteem, he/she might try harder, but to
no avail since the messages cannot improve. So S might give up
in the end and use a different language or choose a different
career. Without need...

Ada provides for a solution to the problem caused by the advanced
technicalities in error messages, I think, using Ada's language profiles
like Ravenscar, but with a focus on teaching:
define a profile to be a language subset a la "Teach Packs" in DrScheme.
Teach packs, IIUC, will let you use, teach, and hence understand just the
parts of Ada that some programming subject demands.  Compilers that
are "aware" of the profile can then stop printing what is, in effect,
gibberish in a teaching situation.

Instead, compilers diagnose something more easily explained:
file.ada:123: "X is not supported in This-Teach-Pack"


I don't know how open GAP is, or how comprehensive in a teaching
society sense.  But it looks like one place to look for things
to be included in a teach pack.  Apparently, efforts like these can fail
when the result is known up front (by desire to teach X no matter what),
or if no impulse from outside computing departments creates resonance.
Psychology of teaching has some insight, and there is some empirical
evidence.

See e.g. the section titled "2. More is more" in:
"Seven Deadly Sins of Introductory Programming Language Design"
by McIver and Conway.