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=1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,b0d569080889afd6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: A question for my personal knowledge. Date: 1999/05/11 Message-ID: <7h9o21$9v4$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 476635514 References: <1VEZ2.1515$I51.88140@carnaval.risq.qc.ca> <37372A84.641F2133@bigfoot.com> <7h8oe8$2js$1@cf01.edf.fr> <37382B0C.A95B6745@bigfoot.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x42.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. X-Article-Creation-Date: Tue May 11 17:06:13 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-05-11T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <37382B0C.A95B6745@bigfoot.com>, Roy Grimm wrote: > If they don't know those concepts, learning a new language in > and of itself certainly isn't going to help them. They > *should* know all that as a result of the training they > received before they took the job in the first place. Well I won't disagree with your *should* here (indeed I think they should have learned Ada as part of this training, since it is a much better introduction to these critical concepts). But you are in my experience quite wrong to think that learning a new language does not help. On the contrary, switching to a new language often illuminates principles that are hard to understand in a language that does not support or is actively hostile to these principles. For example, Fortran programmers were quite puzzled by EWD's letter to the ACM on gotos, but this was totally familiar to all Algol programmers. Once you understand the details of separation of spec and implementation, you can indeed apply this even in languages which are really not very hospitable to the notion, but the experience I have seen is that typical C programmers do NOT have a good understanding of this separation, and learning Ada is very helpful in gaining this understanding. Roy, what is your experience with Fortran or C programmers switching to Ada, does it match this? (indeed, do you have direct experience with projects making such a switch?) --== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==-- ---Share what you know. Learn what you don't.---