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From: dewarr@my-dejanews.com
Subject: Re: Would someone help a struggling ADA student
Date: 1998/10/05
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 <6vaj7d$nht$1@owens.ridgecrest.ca.us>
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In article <6vaj7d$nht$1@owens.ridgecrest.ca.us>,
  do_while@ridgecrest.ca.us (Do-While Jones) wrote:


> My comments are based on the assumption that Steve is taking an
> introductory Ada programming course.  If Steve is taking "Creative Problem
> Solving" or "Artifical Intelligence", and if the course has a prerequisite
> of at least one Ada programming course, then I have no objections.
>
> My fear is that Steve will spend more effort trying to figure out a
> Battleship algorithm than the syntax of an Ada loop.  I'm afraid Steve
> will get the idea that it is hard to program in Ada because it is hard to
> figure out how to write a program that learns the game strategy on the
> fly.


Not to mention learning what programming is all about, e.g. abstraction
models, design approaches, separation of specs and bodies etc.

If indeed this is an algorithms or AI course (the only types of course for
which an assignment like this would be appropriate), then I see no reason to
force students to write in a particular language, since in that context,
language is secondary.

But all kinds of amazing things go on in beginning programming courses :-)

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