Re: Ada 95 Books for Undergraduate Teaching

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

In article <4otg31$74t@news1.delphi.com>,  <tmoran@bix.com> wrote:
>Kenneth Mays remarked on the absence of "Ada for Dummies" type books.
>My son read "C for Dummies", then (at my urging) started on Dr.
>Feldman's book and quickly said that it wasn't clear to him just where
>semicolons must go.  There's clearly a difference between a book to go
>along with a teacher and a course, and a self-study book.  Are there
>self-study Ada books?

That's a good point about the semicolons. I guess I never focused on
it because the rules are simpler than C's or Pascal's, and it's
nearly impossible to mess them up without a compilation error.
There are also loads of examples of complete programs, with very few
fragments, so he can just imitate what he reads. 

We learn natural languages by reading and listening, more than by
rulebooks. One theory says we learn programming langs the same way.

Good point for next edition though. This goes in my to-do file.

You might want to have your son try out John Herro's online tutorial, 
Ada-Tutor. That's the nearest thing to a start-from-scratch
CAI program for Ada.

How's this for a slogan: "Dummies don't _do_ Ada. They do C."

:-)

Mike Feldman