From: Colin James 0621 <cjames@dsc.blm.gov>
Subject: Learning Ada as a first language, not C
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 93 17:12:56 MDT [thread overview]
Message-ID: <9308021712.aa25075@dsc.blm.gov> (raw)
In a recent article, "The History of Programming Languages", Dr. Dobb's
Journal, August 1993, K.N. King, a professor at Georgia State University,
writes:
What should students learn as a first programming language? Many\b
colleges are beginning to teach C as a first language. [[Dennis]]
Ritchie didn't endorse this trend. Any approach that tends to produce
dependence on a particular language is bad, he said, suggesting that
Scheme might be a good choice. ... [[Niklaus]] Wirth asked "Are you
teaching a skill or [providing] general education?" In the former
case, he recommended Ada; in the latter, he advised using a "simpler
language" -- but not C. "I view the landslide of C use in education
as rather a calamity," he said.
And an interesting bit of trivia presumably attributed to William Whitaker,
who managed the development of Ada for DoD:
How much code is written for DoD each day? (Two million lines!)
Wirth was also quoted as follows:
Wirth ... refrained from criticizing C, however, until the closing
panel, where he said that "hacking is in" and claimed that "most
programmers enjoy working by trial and error." Looking at Ritchie,
who was sitting next to him, Wirth continued: "The most important
promoter of this trend: C." He said that languages such as C are
useful for bootstrapping software onto a new machine, but their
use should be only "temporary". Ritchie, taking these attacks
graciously, noted that Wirth's point were "well-taken" and
acknowledged that "it is possible to use C in a better way than
people do." But he also said that "one sometimes has to make
compromises" in the real world.
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