Re: Looking for a good Ada 95 book

[ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)]

Ray Toal <rtoal@cse.eng.lmu.edu> writes:

>My experience has been totally the opposite.  Students can adapt
>easily to different styles.

Could you send some of your students here, PLEASE?
I could do with students like that, really I could.

>Consistency is a big deal - you wouldn't wnat to sprinkle lots of
>underscores in C code because the standard library avoids them,

This is argument is riddled with flaws.
(1) Many people *DO* use lots of underscores in C code.
    Just about everyone who hasn't been brainwashed into using
    "Hungarian" notation, anyway.

(2) The standard library does NOT avoid underscores.
    Here is a partial list of identifiers in the ISO standard C library
    that contain underscores:
	FLT_ROUNDS FLT_RADIX FLT_DIG FLT_EPSILON FLT_MANT_DIG FLT_MAX
	FLT_MAX_10_EXP FLT_MAX_EXP FLT_MIN FLT_MIN_10_EXP FLT_MIN_EXP DBL_DIG
	DBL_EPSILON DBL_MANT_DIG DBL_MAX DBL_MAX_10_EXP DBL_MAX_EXP DBL_MIN
	DBL_MIN_10_EXP DBL_MIN_EXP LDBL_MANT_DIG LDBL_EPSILON LDBL_DIG
	LDBL_MIN_EXP LDBL_MIN LDBL_MIN_10_EXP LDBL_MAX_EXP LDBL_MAX
	LDBL_MAX_10_EXP CHAR_BIT MB_LEN_MAX UCHAR_MAX USHRT_MAX UINT_MAX
	ULONG_MAX CHAR_MAX SCHAR_MAX SHRT_MAX INT_MAX LONG_MAX CHAR_MIN
	SCHAR_MIN SHRT_MIN INT_MIN LONG_MIN LC_ALL LC_COLLATE LC_CTYPE
	LC_MONETARY LC_NUMERIC LC_TIME decimal_point thousands_sep
	int_curr_symbol currency_symbol mon_decimal_point mon_thousands_sep
	mon_grouping positive_sign negative_sign int_frac_digits frac_digits
	p_cs_precedes p_sep_by_space n_cs_precedes n_sep_by_space p_sign_posn
	n_sign_posn jmp_buf sig_atomic_t SIG_DFL SIG_ERR SIG_IGN va_list
	va_start va_end va_arg ptrdiff_t size_t wchar_t FILENAME_MAX FOPEN_MAX
	fpos_t L_tmpnam SEEK_CUR SEEK_END SEEK_SET EXIT_FAILURE EXIT_SUCCESS
	MB_CUR_MAX RAND_MAX div_t ldiv_t clock_t time_t tm_sec tm_min tm_hour
	tm_mday tm_mon tm_year tm_wday tm_yday tm_isdst
    That's 104 identifiers, which is less than a half of the total, but
    not a _lot_ less than a half.

(3) The C standard actually reserves identifiers beginning with "_" for
    use in the library.

(4) If your library uses one convention, and you do not have a decent
    package system, closely imitating the library conventions is the
    LAST thing you want to do because it increases the risk of accidental
    name collision.

>but you like to in Ada because its standard library is full of them.

As explained above, this is *not* a good reason, and it is *not* the
reason why I use underscores in Ada identifiers.  I use spelled out
words separated with underscores for the reasons given in the AQ&S
guidelines.

>I've never seen a student complain about formatting styles, but then
>I've only been teaching 11 years.

Well, I've been teaching 7 years, and the students complained every year.
They don't see why they should lay *their* code out to please *someone else*,
even if the someone else is the person who has to mark their ruddy code.
This year, marking about 40 2nd year students, I found that _none_ of them
followed the layout rules they were told they would be marked down for not
following, and only _one_ of them even came close.

>By the way, I've said before, the content in Feldman's book is
>first-rate and it's the best book I've seen, and the non-standard
>formatting doesn't have to be a big deal at all.

Of *COURSE* it is not a big deal to someone who already fully agrees with it!

YOU have students who
 - don't mind following the style you give them
 - do have trouble knowing which are the keywords
WE have students who
 - DO mind very much following the style we give them
 - do NOT have trouble knowing which are the keywords
   They know because we TELL them, and give them lectures telling them
   what they mean.  If a student knows what "if then else end if" _means_
   s/he doesn't need to be reminded that "if", "then", "else", "end" are
   special words.  Is it really _possible_ for a student to remember how
   if-statements work without remembering that "if" is a special word?

And for die-hard "students who can remember if statements still need to
be reminded that if is a keyword" believers, why, putting "if" in lower
case when non-keywords don't begin with lower case letters is a perfectly
functional reminder.

-- 
Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote!
Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.