From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,e3b9babfa1bca0cb,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: weberwu@sun17.tfh-berlin.de (Debora Weber-Wulff) Subject: Selling Ada as a first language Date: 1996/06/28 Message-ID: <4r0ren$rg2@idy05.tfh-berlin.de>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 162568106 organization: TFH-Berlin (Berlin, Germany) newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-06-28T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: [Haven't been lurking much lately, but I want to share this story with you] The date had been set to instantiate the programming language for the Technical Computer Science curriculum canon. We had a new canon that has a generic course sequence "Programming I-II-I". We had planned an entire afternoon for the discussion. The hands-on, practical, hardware types were dead set on C[++], the idealistic, theoretical software types (most of them) wanted to have Ada (which is the first language we teach in the General Computer Science canon). We began the traditional exchange of arguments/epithets/personal attacks, it looked like it was going to be an all-nighter, as we had to decide on a language VERY SOON. Then the "flange model" emerged (flange hopefully being the right term a joiner would use for this wooden connection). We have 3 semester courses, the first is 4 hours lecture, the second two are each 2 hour lecture courses. It looks like this: +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | |tagged types | | | Ada |tasks, generics | Stuff like + | | /-------------/| Drivers, + | Concepts /-----------+/ | Heavy pointers+ | / C Syntax | Classes, | Problems + | / | Templates | + +-----------------/--------------|----------------|---------------+ We start them off with a good breakfast: all the basics in Ada. We inform them of the syntax in C[++] and some of the quirks. In the second semester we switch to C++, but show the nice syntax and the tasks in Ada. In the third semester we show them how to do all the nasty stuff. And everyone nodded their heads, that sounds reasonable. What a compromise! Everyone won a little, we will run an experiment next semester to see how the model goes over. Just wanted to give folks the idea, I'm sure we're not the only ones who fight language wars :-) Cheers, -- Debora Weber-Wulff (Professorin fuer Softwaretechnik und Programmiersprachen) Technische Fachhochschule Berlin, FB Informatik, Luxemburger Str. 10, 13353 Berlin, Germany email: weberwu@tfh-berlin.de