Re: Ada Compiler for Educational Use

[dragon@trwspf.TRW.COM (Roger Vossler)]

In article <8805121644.AA02786@june.cs.washington.edu> pattis@JUNE.CS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Richard Pattis) writes:
*
*  I have been teaching the CS-1 and CS-2 courses here at the University of
*Washington in Modula-2 for the past 4 years.  I am now strongly considering
*teaching Ada in these classes.  I would like to solicit recommendations for
*compilers: we use a large VAX/VMS for instruction, but will also ultimately
*need compilers for our own department's machines (mostly VAX/ULTRIX and Suns).

In a word: DON'T! We have used Modula-2 a lot in our laboratory for
constructing a multi-sensor testbed to do high performance image
processing, synthetic aperture radar processing, and other applications.
Modula-2 has worked beautifully for this: it's clean, simple, elegant,
etc. Most of these prototypes are in the 50,000 to 100,000 lines of
code catagory.

We are also a large aerospace contractor which provides defense systems,
electronic systems, and spacecraft systems to the government. Needless
to say, more and more of this work is in Ada. We have a need for Ada
trained systems programmers as do many other defense contractors.

I would much prefer to hire people trained thoroughly in Modula-2
before we hit them with Ada. Why? As a hiring manager, I want my
young people to know how good it can be before I show them how bad
it can get. I do not want universities damaging their minds any more
than necessary before I hire them.

While many parts of Ada are useful, much of it is unnecessary for
teaching basic concepts, particularly, in something like CS-1 or
CS-2 (I'm assuming that these are entry level courses). If you really
must teach Ada, do it after they have a solid foundation - not when
their minds are soft and tender. I am not anti-Ada. Ada is a real
advance in software engineering when compared to assembly language
and Fortran which is still widely used on defense systems. I have
argued that Modula-2 is the subset of Ada that Ada should have been
before committees and contractors realized that they could get
rich from it. Sigh.
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