Re: Looking for good Ada95 book

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

Ferretwoman@worldnet.att.net (FerretWoman) writes:
>As a student currently learning Ada, I must admit that I really do
>like having the reserved words in capital letters.  It makes it easier
>to not only remember the words, but also what order to put them and
>what they do in the program.

>We are required to use capital letters for reserved words in any code
>we turn in.

This is perhaps the most valuable posting so far; we now have *evidence*
that one student benefits from upper case keywords.

However, one thing is not clear.  I take it that you have never been taught
Ada using the LRM/AQ&S "keywords are lower case, everything else is Mixed"
style.  Why do you say it is "being in upper case" that helps, rather than
"being visibly distinct"?  In the LRM/AQ&S style, keywords and other words
never ever look alike:  all and only keywords begin with a lower case letter.
What exactly _is_ the style you are being taught with?
If keywords are upper case, and other words are Mixed case, I would have
expected that to be *harder*, because then you have to look at the 2nd
letter to see whether it's a keyword or not, whereas with the LRM/AQ&S
style, it is always enough to look at the 1st letter.

Also, you do not tell us what editor(s) you use to view/modify/create Ada
code.  On the black and white screens I use, editors can put keywords in
bold or underline them.  On the colour screens many students use, editors
can put keywords in a special colour.  We have an Ada->HTML filter so that
all the Ada code I handed out to 2nd year students were printed with bold
keywords &c, and could be viewed on-line the same way.  (Or, with lynx,
with underlined keywords.)

Nor do you tell us whether the style you were using was the same as the
style in the textbook, or whether you were ever shown code in the LRM/AQ&S
style.

So it is a little bit hard to figure out what exactly your evidence is
evidence _of_.  Does it, for example, mean that

	- someone being taught from a textbook with upper case keywords
	- using only non-colouring editors (e.g. not Emacs, not Alpha,
	  not an IDE)
	- and not ever being shown material in the LRM/AQ&S style
	- finds *some* visible distinction between keywords and other words
	  useful, and doesn't know whether some other distinction might be
	  as good or better?

Please don't take this as an attack.  I think your posting was an excellent
thing, and I really would be grateful if you would fill in a bit more detail.

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