Re: Please Help.

[ludowyk@yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au (Tristan Ludowyk)]

Robert Dewar (dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu) wrote:
: Dale says
: 
: <<(note that Unbounded_IO is a simple package that i wrote). In my
: experience variable length string handling is one thing that has
: turned students off Ada a lot. Unbounded_String is a godsend in
: this respect. It's a pity that a standard I/O package wasn't
: defined in the standard for this type.>>
: 
: I actually find such claims incredible. I would never introduce
: Unbounded_String to students till quite late in the class, since
: this kind of concentration on featurism is exactly what you do NOT
: want to teach students. Sure you introduce examples of abstractions
: to teach students, but this is a bad example, because it has too
: much complexity (particularly the reliance on controlled types).

As a new Ada programmer and a student of Dale's I feel I should say something here.  

Firstly, I would say that variable length string handling is something that all students should become accustomed to using the basic string type which teaches the concepts of how a string is stored in memory and basic techniques for getting around these problems.  This is how I was taught - it wasn't until I had been using these techniques for 1/2 a year that the concept of Unbounded_Strings was introduced to me.

I believe that this is not too "early" since it presents a cleaner way of handling strings, but the student still has the knowledge of how to handle normal strings.  

Secondly, is it really necessary for the student to understand all the inner workings of the Unbounded_String before they use it in their code?  Surely they can safely use them and familiarise themselves without doing any harm to the development of their programming technique.

: To me, the idea that a student can be turned off because of a lack of
: some particular feature in a language is like saying that students
: are turned off chemistry because they have trouble with the analysis
: of one particular compound.

I do not find this analogy so absurd.  For instance a chem. student having slight trouble with their analysis of a compound using a particular method of analysis might try a different method.  Either method (language) may have its good and bad points, but for a student to give up on one particular method because of one trivial problem that does not appear in another method would not benefit the student, but I'm sure that the student would opt for the method that makes the task at hand that little bit simpl
er.  

I found handling strings a pain at first, but quickly learnt what was involved.  But now I would rather work with Unbounded_Strings for many applications because they provide a solution to some of the shortcomings of String.  

: Dale, are you really speaking from experience here? your own perhaps?
: or from experience teaching. My own experience is that the one thing
: that turns on or turns off students most is the professor. A bad
: professor can make Ada a catastrophe from the students point of view,
: a good one could teach 1401 Autocoder, and the students would be happy.
: Of course students are not the ones to be able to judge curriculum
: content in any case.

I should say that when I began with Ada, I had the attitude that most people have towards Ada.  The biggest factor in changing my mind was Dale's approach to both teaching.  He has shown me many of the things Ada can do that I was unaware of and I think that most of his other students would agree with what I am saying.

Just my opinion as a humble student  :)

Tristan.
-- 
    _/                 Tristan Ludowyk                               \_\_\_\_
   _/_/     RMIT Comp.Sys.Eng/Comp.Sci - 1st year   ____TTTc____/|    \_\_\_
  _/_/_/    Email: ludowyk@yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au    (_u|||_o_) \|     \_\_
 _/_/_/_/        "Donkeys live a long time"             ^^^             \_