Re: Looking for a good Ada 95 book

[Dale Stanbrough <dale@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>]

Larry Kilgallen writes:

"Although these concerns are real, they also exist in industry.
 To the extent that team programming and maintenance programming
 are a _given_ in the real world, devising methods to "teach" them
 (or at least "experience" them) in an educational setting is quite
 important."

Yes I understand this. However when someone leaves a company and
moves on to another, their lack of ability doesn't reflect on the
company. However when someone graduates from a University/College/
whatever, they are given a piece of paper which says "we think this
person _is_ good enough". Often the _only_ thing a University has
of worth to employers is a reputation. If you sully that with students
who get a free ride, you are in trouble.


"Regarding the maintenance programming problem, would it be possible
 to give each team some equally garbage code created by some team from
 a previous year?  This actually provides an even better emulation of
 industry, since one cannot go down the hall to get help from a "departed
 programmer"."

Great idea. I even did it this semester in my Concurrent programming 
subject where students had to make old code concurrent. Students quickly
appreciate the value of comments, identifiers, and working, _well tested_
code :-).


Dale