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=-1.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, PLING_QUERY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1014db,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kaz@helios.crest.nt.com (Kaz Kylheku) Subject: Re: How big is an int? (was: Yet another stupid language war (was: ... the only languages you need!!)) Date: 1997/11/21 Message-ID: <654rr7$koh$1@helios.crest.nt.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 291393470 References: <3474C1F0.365A@dynamite.com.au> <6527n9$340@mtinsc05.worldnet.att.net> <34767515.5253@dynamite.com.au> Organization: A poorly-installed InterNetNews site Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1997-11-21T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <34767515.5253@dynamite.com.au>, Alan E & Carmel J Brain wrote: >Also: > >>One Academic institution (not mine, thank God!)has bowed to student >demand, and CS1 is now going to be taught using C++ instead of Ada as a >first language. > >Little things like that. I've heard variants on that theme; CS departments bowing to ``industry pressure'' (rather than student demand) to start teaching C++ instead of, say, Modula 2, C, or what have you. Which is crap, because teaching a certain langauge in schools perpetuates the industry's use of that language. If some city's university taught Ada, more of the local software shops would use it, because they could recruit programmers willing and able to work in Ada. I'd really like to see schools use languages like Ada or Eiffel to teach introductory programming. In particular, Eiffel, with its organized support for assertions. As far as teaching fundamentals goes, this feature is far more important than fancy type mechanisms, OO and whatnot, because it harmonizes with the the fundamentals of writing correct programs. Students should learn to decompose programs into modules with not only well-defined interfaces in terms of semantics and type compatibility, well-defined in terms of contracts between the service user and the service provider. And, of course, data structures have to be understood not only as passive entities, but as entities having a state that is governed by invariants that must be preserved after each operation.