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From: Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Examples in Docs, was Re: Escape Sequences in Strings
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 03:44:02 GMT
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In article
<Pine.BSF.4.21.0101170815001.21897-100000@shell5.ba.best.com>,
  Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> wrote:
> I wonder if you learned SML programming from "The Definition
> of Standard ML" :-).

Yes, it's the only document I ever read to learn ML.

> Seriously, I'm pretty amazed that anyone can learn to program
> from a  typical language spec without examples. Do you think
> it is a learnable  and teachable skill (do you teach your
> students this?), or is it a unique quirk?

Well certainly it helps to have a lot of experience in looking
at different language designs.

I don't think it is a quirk by any means. After all a
mathematician does not need examples of what a proof is
talking about.

Examples can never tell you what the general rules are, they
can only illustrate particular cases, and therefore there is
a danger of not understanding the generalization.

Certainly a BNF grammar is a FAR clearer documentation of
syntax than syntactic examples, wouldn't you agree?


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