* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book
@ 1996-11-12 0:00 Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-93
0 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread
From: Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-93 @ 1996-11-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
Michael Feldman <mfeldman@SEAS.GWU.EDU> writes:
>
>If the lexical style is really sufficient reason to adopt or reject a
>text, I'd say you're not reading for content...
>
>
I've read your book and I think the important thing is that it
does something lots of Ada critics said couldn't be done: Teach
beginning programming using Ada. (You know the criticsms - too
complex, too much to know before you can write anything useful,
etc, etc.)
While I did find the format of the code a little disconcerting (I
got used to the lower-case reserved words, SHOUTING_IDENTIFIERS
common in Ada83) I didn't find it terribly distracting. The main
thing I've found with formatting is simply to be consistent.
(That, and taking the time to *DO* it makes you review and
double-check your code!)
Far more disturbing to me is code that is "organically grown". The
sort of thing that happens when the programmer is thinking "If I
stick this variable in this package then procedure X can write
some data which function Y can read and update and I won't have to
add new 'with' clauses..." All too often, bad formatting is a
'leading indicator' that you're going to see organically grown
code.
MDC
Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer ATT: 561.796.8997
M/S 731-96 Technet: 796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP Fax: 561.796.4669
P.O. Box 109600 Internet: CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600 Internet: CONDIC@FLINET.COM
===============================================================================
"That which belongs to another."
-- Diogenes, when asked what wine he liked to drink.
===============================================================================
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Looking for good Ada95 book @ 1996-10-26 0:00 Lars Lundgren 1996-10-28 0:00 ` Rapicault Pascal ` (3 more replies) 0 siblings, 4 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Lars Lundgren @ 1996-10-26 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Hello. Can anyone out there recomend a good Ada95 book. I would like to use it to learn the language as well as a reference. I would like it to be correct and complete. I have seen a list of ten good java books presented in comp.lang.java. Is there a corresponding list for Ada book? /Lars L ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-10-26 0:00 Lars Lundgren @ 1996-10-28 0:00 ` Rapicault Pascal [not found] ` <01bbc5d8$a3b24e00$6a9148a6@cornerstone.mydomain.org> 1996-10-28 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Rapicault Pascal @ 1996-10-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Hi, In my opinion, you must look at the John Barnes book. Personnaly I have it for Ada 83. Bye. Scal. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <01bbc5d8$a3b24e00$6a9148a6@cornerstone.mydomain.org>]
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book [not found] ` <01bbc5d8$a3b24e00$6a9148a6@cornerstone.mydomain.org> @ 1996-10-29 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-10-30 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-10-31 0:00 ` Tom Pastuszak 0 siblings, 2 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-10-29 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Fran Post says "I would have to second the Barnes book. Stay away from the Feldman books." This seems like a type error to me (comparing values of different types). The Feldman books are not Ada books, they are CS1/2 books that happen to use Ada, and I find them well written for this purpose (I stil don't like the horrible non-standard keyword/identifier style, but other than that ...:-) The Barnes book IS an Ada book. If you don't know how to design programs, and want to learn, and want to learn using Ada, you will find Feldman's book much more appropriate than Barnes. If you know how to design programs and want to learn specifically about Ada, then the Barnes book is much more appropriate. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-10-29 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-10-30 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-10-31 0:00 ` Tom Pastuszak 1 sibling, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Michael Feldman @ 1996-10-30 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.846630258@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote: >Fran Post says >This seems like a type error to me (comparing values of different types). >The Feldman books are not Ada books, they are CS1/2 books that happen to >use Ada, and I find them well written for this purpose (I stil don't like >the horrible non-standard keyword/identifier style, but other than that ...:-) Your characterization of the books is correct, Robert, though I think it's going too far to describe the lexical style as "horrible." It does what it is intended to do. >The Barnes book IS an Ada book. In the sense that it is intended for experienced programmers interested in learning the language, per se. For this purpose, I agree that it is an excellent book. My only quibble - which I've had since the first edition back in the early 80's - is that it is full of fragmentary bits of code, with VERY few full programs. Even experienced programmers (in my experience teaching industry courses) get trapped by the "what-goes-where" problem and really value seeing full, compilable programs. For full programs, I think Cohen's book, and Naiditch's, do a better job. >If you don't know how to design programs, and want to learn, and want to >learn using Ada, you will find Feldman's book much more appropriate than >Barnes. If you know how to design programs and want to learn specifically >about Ada, then the Barnes book is much more appropriate. I agree wholeheartedly. We have written for different sets of readers. The biggest risk in practitioners using books like mine is that there are _big_ chunks of the language that I don't breathe a word about. With a 700 or 800 page limit, something's gotta give.:-) Mike Feldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michael B. Feldman - chair, SIGAda Education Working Group Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science The George Washington University - Washington, DC 20052 USA 202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/mfeldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pork is all that money the government gives the other guys. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WWW: http://www.adahome.com or http://info.acm.org/sigada/education ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-10-30 0:00 ` Michael Feldman @ 1996-11-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney ` (4 more replies) 0 siblings, 5 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-02 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Mike said 'Your characterization of the books is correct, Robert, though I think it's going too far to describe the lexical style as "horrible." It does what it is intended to do. " No, I stick by my characterization of horrible. It means that you are teaching students to use a style which is not the standard style that we want to encourage for Ada use. People tend to stick with the style they first learn, so this kind of nonstandard choice causes problems later on. The result in my class is that some people use the Feldman style and some use the more standard style that I (and most other Ada programmers) use. I understand, but find unconvincing, Mike's arguments for this nonstandard style (in which keywords are capitalized). Obviously tastes vary, but for me this disadvantage is sufficient to look at competitive text books that follow a more standard style. This is obviously a question on which opinions will differ, but for me variation in lexical style is very annoying, and it is a great advantage if a language has a pretty standard style, either enforced by the language (COBOL), or by generally accepted convention (C). In the case of Ada, the original RM encouraged an ALL_CAPS style for identifiers that many adopted, but many found intolerable because they FELT IT WAS LIKE SHOUTING! Consequently we had a big mixture of clashing styles, even sometimes I saw employees plain refuse to follow company standards. With Ada 95, we have something approaching a real consensus on style (use lower case for keywords and Capitalized_Identifiers_With_Underscores). I think this consensus is valuable for the community, and I think it is damaging for a text book in effect to wage a rear guard action against this consensus. Mike feels that UPPER case keywords are superior from a pedagogical point of view. Even if this were true (I don't accept this), it is not enough to make it acceptable to undermine consensus style issues. Certainly I don't see people seriously arguing this as an issue in teaching C (though of cours there are many other legitimate issues when it comes to teaching C as a first language). SO, horrible may be too far for Mike, but I stand by it! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Robert A Duff ` (3 subsequent siblings) 4 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Matthew Heaney @ 1996-11-03 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.846952540@merv>, dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >Mike said > >'Your characterization of the books is correct, Robert, though I think >it's going too far to describe the lexical style as "horrible." It >does what it is intended to do. >" > >No, I stick by my characterization of horrible. It means that you are >teaching students to use a style which is not the standard style that >we want to encourage for Ada use. People tend to stick with the style >they first learn, so this kind of nonstandard choice causes problems >later on. Mike, I agree with Robert here. One thing that Robert didn't mention is that many language-sensitive editors put the language keywords in a different color. So that should obviate the need for you to do anything special in the code (ie make all uppercase) to call out keywords. The other thing, too, is that studies have shown (see Ben Schneiderman's book, Designing the User Interface) that humans read all-uppercase more slowly than mixed case. And these days with "netiquette idioms" having emerged, all uppercase means SHOUTING AT THE READER. You don't want to shout at the poor reader of your Ada source code, do you? -------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Heaney Software Development Consultant mheaney@ni.net (818) 985-1271 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney @ 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Robert A Duff 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen ` (2 subsequent siblings) 4 siblings, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Robert A Duff @ 1996-11-03 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.846952540@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote: >No, I stick by my characterization of horrible. ... I agree. It would be a Good Thing if all Ada programmers could agree on such trivial style issues as upper-case vs. lower-case reserved words. The RM recommends lower case. If I thought I could get away with it, I would have made that a *requirement* in the RM. But these issues are so emotion-laden, that I never had any serious hope of getting away with such a radical position -- I never even opened my mouth on the point. - Bob ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Robert A Duff @ 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-03 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) iRobert Duff said "I agree. It would be a Good Thing if all Ada programmers could agree on such trivial style issues as upper-case vs. lower-case reserved words. The RM recommends lower case. If I thought I could get away with it, I would have made that a *requirement* in the RM. But these issues are so emotion-laden, that I never had any serious hope of getting away with such a radical position -- I never even opened my mouth on the point. " Well clearly the compatibility requirement would have stood in the way of such requirements. However, the fact that we changed the style in the RM, and the fact that the overwhelming majority of Ada programmers are converging on one standard style (lower case keywords, and Mixed_Case_Identifiers) is definitely a Good Thing, and to be encouraged wherever possible. I certainly would like it if all Ada text books followed this model, and consider it a weakness if they do not. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Robert A Duff @ 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Jerry Petrey 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 4 siblings, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Norman H. Cohen @ 1996-11-04 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert Dewar wrote: > In the case of Ada, the original RM encouraged an ALL_CAPS style for > identifiers that many adopted, but many found intolerable because they > FELT IT WAS LIKE SHOUTING! More important to me than any sense of being shouted at was the fact that confining yourself to one case, when the language rules allow either upper or lower case, is throwing away an opportunity for expressiveness. Why write CHANNELS_ALLOCATED_TO_CBS and make your reader wonder whether you meant Channels_Allocated_To_CBS or Channels_Allocated_To_CBs? (For those outside the US, CBS is a television network and CBs are Citizens Band radios.) -- Norman H. Cohen mailto:ncohen@watson.ibm.com http://www.research.ibm.com/people/n/ncohen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen @ 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Jerry Petrey 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 0 siblings, 2 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Jerry Petrey @ 1996-11-04 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Norman H. Cohen wrote: > > Robert Dewar wrote: > > > In the case of Ada, the original RM encouraged an ALL_CAPS style for > > identifiers that many adopted, but many found intolerable because they > > FELT IT WAS LIKE SHOUTING! > > More important to me than any sense of being shouted at was the fact > that confining yourself to one case, when the language rules allow > either upper or lower case, is throwing away an opportunity for > expressiveness. > > Why write CHANNELS_ALLOCATED_TO_CBS and make your reader wonder whether > you meant Channels_Allocated_To_CBS or Channels_Allocated_To_CBs? > > (For those outside the US, CBS is a television network and CBs are > Citizens Band radios.) > > -- > Norman H. Cohen > mailto:ncohen@watson.ibm.com > http://www.research.ibm.com/people/n/ncohen I agree with Norman on this but unfortunately automatic formatters and many people will only write Channels_Allocated_To_Cbs, capitalizing only the the first letter of each word even when some are acronyms and should be in all caps. In any case, I think Feldman's book is still a very good book for its intended audience, in spite of this difference in style. Other great books are: Norman's "Ada 95 as a Second Language", Naiditch's "Rendezvous with Ada 95", Smith's "O-O Software in Ada 95" and, of course, Barnes' "Programming in Ada 95". -- ===================================================================== = Jerry Petrey - Consultant Software Engineer - Member Team Ada = = Rockwell Collins Avionics = = email: home - gpetrey@gate.net work: gdp@mlb.cca.rockwell.com = ===================================================================== -- ===================================================================== = Jerry Petrey - Consultant Software Engineer - Member Team Ada = = Rockwell Collins Avionics = = email: home - gpetrey@gate.net work: gdp@mlb.cca.rockwell.com = = ===================================================================== ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Jerry Petrey @ 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1 sibling, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-06 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Jerry Petrey <gpetrey@gate.net> writes: >I agree with Norman on this but unfortunately automatic formatters and >many people will only write Channels_Allocated_To_Cbs, capitalizing >only the the first letter of each word even when some are acronyms >and should be in all caps. The free program 'aimap' can be used to fix that. I have never used an automatic formatter for Ada (it would be _very_ nice to have one when marking student code), but I can't imagine why a modern formatter _wouldn't_ do something like aimap here. >In any case, I think Feldman's book is still a very good book for >its intended audience, in spite of this difference in style. Nobody denies _that_. The pity is that it would be even _better_ if it followed the AQ&S guidelines. We teach Ada in 1st and 2nd year here. Feldman has done too much good to the Ada community for us to be able to ignore him, _but_ we have such a hard struggle getting students to follow any convention at all (they _will_ indent by 8s even when you tell them "use ^T to indent in VIle, not ^I") that the _last_ thing we need is a book *teaching* them to use a different, and significantly uglier, style. For what it's worth, there are elements of my *preferred* style which differ from the AQ&S guidelines, and I have deliberately switched to someone I like less because I don't think my "rights" to write as I prefer outweigh the _students'_ rights to be presented with *consistent* good examples. I like Barnes' books a _lot_. -- Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Jerry Petrey 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1 sibling, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Michael Feldman @ 1996-11-09 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <327EA5BB.1EFD@gate.net>, Jerry Petrey <gpetrey@gate.net> wrote: [snip] >In any case, I think Feldman's book is still a very good book for >its intended audience, in spite of this difference in style. >Other great books are: Norman's "Ada 95 as a Second Language", >Naiditch's "Rendezvous with Ada 95", Smith's "O-O Software in Ada 95" >and, of course, Barnes' "Programming in Ada 95". I agree with you about all these books; each has its intended audience. I'm delighted to run into someone who actually seems to be reading for content, instead of trashing a book for a supposed "rear guard" against a consensus lexical style. Thanks for the support. Mike Feldman ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen @ 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen ` (2 more replies) 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 4 siblings, 3 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Michael F Brenner @ 1996-11-04 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) > With Ada 95, we have something approaching a real consensus on style (use > lower case for keywords and Capitalized_Identifiers_With_Underscores). I > think this consensus is valuable for the community, I was not asked what my opinion was before forming this imaginary consensus, and I feel that we should reject all nonsense standards such as capitalization that take time away from making a program semantically correct (solving the problem correctly) and making it efficient. If a standard is going to become a consensus, it should capitalize like almost all languages on Earth that have capitals do: only acronyms and the first letter of each computer program are capitals, all others are small letters. But most importantly, do not make standards without the consent of the victims who will be subjected to the tyrrany of those standards. If I am not permitted input into the process, then the process Must not be construed to effect me. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner @ 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-06 0:00 ` James Thiele 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Robert A Duff 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 2 siblings, 2 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1996-11-04 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <55kmtp$3s3@top.mitre.org>, mfb@mbunix.mitre.org (Michael F Brenner) writes: > > With Ada 95, we have something approaching a real consensus on style (use > > lower case for keywords and Capitalized_Identifiers_With_Underscores). I > > think this consensus is valuable for the community, > > I was not asked what my opinion was before forming this imaginary > consensus, and I feel that we should reject all nonsense standards > such as capitalization that take time away from making a program > semantically correct (solving the problem correctly) and making > it efficient. If a standard is going to become a consensus, it > should capitalize like almost all languages on Earth that have > capitals do: only acronyms and the first letter of each computer > program are capitals, all others are small letters. But most > importantly, do not make standards without the consent of the > victims who will be subjected to the tyrrany of those standards. > If I am not permitted input into the process, then the process > Must not be construed to effect me. Although adding underscores is problematic, it seems to me that for programs on a computer letting each reader view them with their preferred capitalization should be a trivial extension to an editor which already does syntax coloring. Larry Kilgallen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-06 0:00 ` James Thiele 1 sibling, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-04 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Michael says "> I was not asked what my opinion was before forming this imaginary > consensus, and I feel that we should reject all nonsense standards > such as capitalization that take time away from making a program > semantically correct (solving the problem correctly) and making > it efficient." (at least I hope it was Michael, sorry if I am confused). In fact consistency of style is critical to producting reliable maintainable programs. Sure, there are always some people who say that they don't want to be constrained by such silly things as petty consistency. I consider this viewpoint to be a menace since it leads to notions of idiosyncratic personal style and code ownership, which to me are anathema to realiable large scale programming. I think Michael's specific recommended style (lower case for everything) does NOT lead to the most readable code, and I think it is a big improvement that we are indeed seeing something like a general consensus in coding style (I react here to the huge volume of Ada 95 code we receive at report@gnat.com from thousands of users of GNAt, nearly all of whom adhere to the lower case keywords, Mixed_Case_Identifier style. Not all, but nearly all. I know that one can have tools that automatically translate from one style to another, but even if such tools work perfectly (they cannot in practice, since naming often has semantic contnts, e.g. NOSC_Policy, not Nosc_Policy may be preferred), they do not promote common interchange of code. It is far better if, as in the C world, people converge on a single style that everyone uses. I think this convergence is much more important than what particular style is chosen. As Tarski use to say, explaining why stanards are important, it really doesn't matter if you drive on the left or the right, but it is quite importnat that everyone agree. I used to prefer the Ada-83 RM SHOUTING_IDENTIFIER style, since it is wht I was used to, but after a painful transition, I now can't stand that style any more. That's the real point, people get used to almost any convention, so they might as well get used to a common comvention. That is why Mike's book is disturbing, it creates a generation of Ada programmers who have got used to a seriously non-standard style. Virtually NO code that we see at report@gnat.com uses upper case keywords like BEGIN and END. The only other use we see is SHOUTING_IDENTIFIERS, Ada 83 style, and that is certainly disappearing fast. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-11 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 0 siblings, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Michael Feldman @ 1996-11-09 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.847123116@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote: [snip] >That is why Mike's book is disturbing, it creates a generation of Ada >programmers who have got used to a seriously non-standard style. Virtually >NO code that we see at report@gnat.com uses upper case keywords like BEGIN >and END. The only other use we see is SHOUTING_IDENTIFIERS, Ada 83 style, and >that is certainly disappearing fast. I rest my case. (pun intended.) Even my freshmen are usually cool enough to use lower-case reserved words once they get to be sophomores. I even suggest that they do so. I also avoid use clauses, for the most part; GNAT sources use them all over the place. Which of us is "right", Robert? Somehow my students - once they understand what they are doing - manage to switch to a style that suits them instead of me. Maybe your freshmen are inherently smarter than mine; they need no emphasis to help them distinguish reserved words. Fine. Sheesh; this is really getting tiresome. Mike Feldman ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman @ 1996-11-11 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Mark Shaw 0 siblings, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-11 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes: >I rest my case. (pun intended.) Even my freshmen are usually cool enough >to use lower-case reserved words once they get to be sophomores. I even >suggest that they do so. Your freshmen are not our undergraduates. Our undergraduates are hostile to the idea of a common coding style. When I say "hostile", I am not exaggerating for effect; the things I was called when I asked that C code be run through indent (with a profile that I provided) just before sending it to me for marking, they'd make your hair curl. "Fascist" was the least of them. I wasn't even asking that they _write_ in a particular style, only that they _indent_ to that style just before posting! And these are second-year students, not first year students. I'm not sure what a sophomore[%] is, it's not a word we use, but these are wise fools indeed. This semester just past, students were told, by the lecturer running the course, and repeated again in the published marking guide for each assignment, that they would lose marks if they didn't follow the AQ&S guidelines for layout and naming. Well, they lost marks. >Maybe your freshmen are inherently smarter than mine; they need no emphasis >to help them distinguish reserved words. Fine. First observation: the AQ&S style *distinguishes* keywords from identifiers, and very successfully at that. Second observation: from what I can see, our students are, um, rather more academically challenged than yours. They have mediocre to poor literacy skills and essentially no common sense. (For example, in a 2nd year assignment about priority queues, I provided an implementation of "leftist trees", they were told about the Feldman data structures, and the very textbook they were using had a complete priority queue package, and they were explicitly told they could use any one of these, yet most of them wrote their own, and that badly. Sigh.) For many of them, the art of using the index in a book is a black mystery. Yet one thing our students have *no* trouble with is keywords. Even our 1st year students. The keywords tend to be in syntactically salient positions. Let's face it, we are trying to teach a whole lot of things in a short time. (3 or 4 years is a short time. It's taken me 20 years to learn some of the things I try to teach.) One of the things we are trying to teach is that you do not write code to please yourself, but to communicate to other people. This is *amazingly* hard to get across; exposure to computing in schools has convinced the students that programming is all about one person telling one computer what to do, and it is heartbreakingly difficult to change their minds about this. One aspect of communicating with other people is adopting a shared style; placing the benefit to other people above one's own taste. The students need to see *us* doing this, which is why I have conformed my own style to the AQ&S. (Semper reformanda; the AQ&S does not yield all its wisdom in a single reading.) The students also need to see the textbooks doing the same thing, because when they see a textbook author doing his own thing, they claim the same right. By the way, I am co-supervising a masters student whose thesis bears on the problem of evaluating whether first-year teaching choices actually produce the outcomes they are supposed to: if there is research which shows that "KEYWORD Identifier" does actually work better with 1st-year students than "keyword Identifier", I, the other supervisor, and the student, would be most grateful to hear of it. [%] The third dictionary I checked had it: "a 2nd year student at an American university". -- Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-11 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Mark Shaw 0 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Mark Shaw @ 1996-11-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) IMHO I think that ada95 from the beginning by Skansholm is quite a good book for begginers.......... Mark ----------------------------------------------------------------- Phrase of the week: 'If at first you succeed, don't take any more stupid chances.' Mark Shaw is at Bradford University. He is studying computer science and has a web page at http://www.brad.ac.uk/~msshaw and at http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/9995 He is helping with the UBU web pages and is a UBU councillor. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-06 0:00 ` James Thiele 1996-11-08 0:00 ` Stephen Leake 1 sibling, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: James Thiele @ 1996-11-06 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <1996Nov4.083416.1@eisner> kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) writes: >In article <55kmtp$3s3@top.mitre.org>, mfb@mbunix.mitre.org (Michael F Brenner) writes: >> > With Ada 95, we have something approaching a real consensus on style (use >> > lower case for keywords and Capitalized_Identifiers_With_Underscores). I >> > think this consensus is valuable for the community, >> >> I was not asked what my opinion was before forming this imaginary [snip] > >Although adding underscores is problematic, it seems to me that >for programs on a computer letting each reader view them with >their preferred capitalization should be a trivial extension >to an editor which already does syntax coloring. And when you print the program, do you use ink and paper which lets each reader view it with their preferred capitalization? -- James Thiele james@cdac.com (work) or jet@eskimo.com (home) http://www.eskimo.com/~jet ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-06 0:00 ` James Thiele @ 1996-11-08 0:00 ` Stephen Leake 0 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Stephen Leake @ 1996-11-08 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) James Thiele wrote: > > In article <1996Nov4.083416.1@eisner> kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) writes: > >In article <55kmtp$3s3@top.mitre.org>, mfb@mbunix.mitre.org (Michael F Brenner) writes: > >> > With Ada 95, we have something approaching a real consensus on style (use > >> > lower case for keywords and Capitalized_Identifiers_With_Underscores). I > >> > think this consensus is valuable for the community, > >> > >> I was not asked what my opinion was before forming this imaginary > [snip] > > > >Although adding underscores is problematic, it seems to me that > >for programs on a computer letting each reader view them with > >their preferred capitalization should be a trivial extension > >to an editor which already does syntax coloring. > > And when you print the program, do you use ink and paper which lets > each reader view it with their preferred capitalization? Maybe I'm in a small minority, but since I'm blessed with a big screen, it has literally been years since I've printed out code! So I don't give much weight to "what will this look like when printed". > -- > James Thiele > james@cdac.com (work) or jet@eskimo.com (home) > http://www.eskimo.com/~jet -- - Stephe ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Robert A Duff 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 2 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Robert A Duff @ 1996-11-06 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <55kmtp$3s3@top.mitre.org>, Michael F Brenner <mfb@mbunix.mitre.org> wrote: >I was not asked what my opinion was before forming this imaginary >consensus, ... Sure you were. The Ada 9X process was public, and anybody was allowed to comment. We got *lots* of comments. - Bob ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Robert A Duff @ 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-06 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) mfb@mbunix.mitre.org (Michael F Brenner) writes: >I was not asked what my opinion was before forming this imaginary >consensus Actually, you were. You just weren't listening. There's no smiley on this, because it is literally true. The old AQ&S guidelines invited comment. Comments were also invited for the Ada 9x revisions (which turned out to be Ada 95). There was quite a long time when people could have written in comments about style. >and I feel that we should reject all nonsense standards >such as capitalization and then goes on to propose a standard for capitalisation >that take time away from making a program >semantically correct (solving the problem correctly) and making >it efficient. But you have this backwards. _Following_ a capitalisation convention *saves* time, because it eliminates unimportant decisions. >If a standard is going to become a consensus, it >should capitalize like almost all languages on Earth that have >capitals do: only acronyms and the first letter of each computer >program are capitals, all others are small letters. The first letter of each computer program? I merely note that English and German have *different* capitalisation rules, and pass on to the next point. >But most >importantly, do not make standards without the consent of the >victims who will be subjected to the tyrrany of those standards. >If I am not permitted input into the process, then the process >Must not be construed to effect me. You can with good reason level this charge at Microsoft, whose weird convention you _have_ to follow when using their C API. But you cannot level it at Ada, where there _was_ an opportunity for the general public to provide input. I read a lot of the documents, decided the people working on them knew what they were doing, and waited impatiently for the result. I had paper stacked about a metre feet high with this stuff. Did you notice, by the way, that if your claim about standards were extended to national laws, you would feel yourself free to ignore almost every law in the USA, certainly the Consistution would not bind you, and you would not feel obliged to obey the laws of _this_ country (Australia) and would merrily drive down the wrong side of the street. I wish more people would stop screaming about the "THEY are infringing on MY rights" side of things (in programming; screaming about rights is often a good idea in politics) and think about the courtesy they owe to other people who have to deal with their code. The _real_ victims are the people who have to maintain code written by someone who insisted on his rights. The whole point of Ada, after all, is to reduce costs over the _whole_ lifecycle, including maintenance. For what it's worth, I agree that a layout style should be based on natural language, and the Ada Quality & Style Guidelines explicitly mention that point. Pursuing the reductio ad absurdum a bit further, nobody asked *me* what the grammar, spelling, or vocabulary of English should be. I suppose I have a _right_ to "any reo I want patter", but I have no right to expect other people to like it, or to hire me. (I wonder how many people reading this group understand the old English comedy line "How bona to vada your dolly old eek" or the following sentence which most New Zealanders would have understood before the impact of American TV: "I need some kai in my puku.") -- Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 0 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-06 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) iMichael says ">But most >importantly, do not make standards without the consent of the >victims who will be subjected to the tyrrany of those standards. >If I am not permitted input into the process, then the process >Must not be construed to effect me." Don't worry too much, at least from where I sit, you are the LAST person I would try to impose any standards on, I avoid people with this kind of attitude, regardless of their supposed skills (I say supposed, because to me, the ability to follow consistent style guidelines without such foolish objections is a critical part of professional competence in the programming area). You will find plenty of places where such views are considered aceptable, though I suspect you may do better sticking to C and C++, isntead of persuing Ada, if you have this kind of attitude :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar ` (3 preceding siblings ...) 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner @ 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-10 0:00 ` Lars Farm 1996-11-14 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 4 siblings, 2 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Michael Feldman @ 1996-11-09 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.846952540@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote: > >The result in my class is that some people use the Feldman style and >some use the more standard style that I (and most other Ada programmers) >use. So, this is fine. > >I understand, but find unconvincing, Mike's arguments for this nonstandard >style (in which keywords are capitalized). Right - I borrowed it from a long line of Pascal-in-CS1 authors. I'm really getting bored with fighting this battle repeatedly over something very small. The Pascal community went to the upper-case style because it was a reasonable replacement for bold-facing, in teaching beginners. > >Obviously tastes vary, but for me this disadvantage is sufficient to >look at competitive text books that follow a more standard style. This >is obviously a question on which opinions will differ, but for me variation >in lexical style is very annoying, and it is a great advantage if a language >has a pretty standard style, either enforced by the language (COBOL), or >by generally accepted convention (C). So use a different book... tastes vary. >With Ada 95, we have something approaching a real consensus on style (use >lower case for keywords and Capitalized_Identifiers_With_Underscores). I >think this consensus is valuable for the community, and I think it is >damaging for a text book in effect to wage a rear guard action against >this consensus. Rear-guard action? Gimmea break! Damaging to what? To whom? C'mon - the RM leaves it up to individuals to set a lexical style. Why do you feel the urge to be dictatorial? It's NOT a rear-guard action, merely a pedagogical technique. When I'm writing for beginners, I use the capitalized style; when I'm not, I don;t. Jeez - not everything has to be so _political_. I'm not opposed to the "standard" style; I just bought in to teaching beginners using a style adopted by hundreds of Pascal teachers. > >Mike feels that UPPER case keywords are superior from a pedagogical point >of view. Even if this were true (I don't accept this), it is not enough >to make it acceptable to undermine consensus style issues. Certainly >I don't see people seriously arguing this as an issue in teaching C >(though of cours there are many other legitimate issues when it comes >to teaching C as a first language). I beg your pardon - there are lots of style in writing C identifiers. Some use lower case, others mixed case. C _requires_ reserved words to be in lower case, so everyone does it. Ada requires nothing of the kind. You are right - there are lots of issues, so why do you persist in fighting this battle? Maybe I'll change it in the next edition (Cohen changed his...), maybe not. I find the students like it. >SO, horrible may be too far for Mike, but I stand by it! Robert, you're making a VERY big deal over something VERY small. Any student (beyond the first year) incapable of switching the case of his reserved words to suit his teacher or manager had better get out of CS. If the lexical style is really sufficient reason to adopt or reject a text, I'd say you're not reading for content... Mike Feldman ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman @ 1996-11-10 0:00 ` Lars Farm 1996-11-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-14 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1 sibling, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Lars Farm @ 1996-11-10 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Michael Feldman <mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu> wrote: > Robert, you're making a VERY big deal over something VERY small. The argument is "egoless programming". If there is no ego involved wouldn't one then be willing to, not only write, but also read other styles than ones own? -- Lars Farm, lars.farm@ite.mh.se ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-10 0:00 ` Lars Farm @ 1996-11-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-11 0:00 ` Lars Farm 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 0 siblings, 2 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-10 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Lars says "The argument is "egoless programming". If there is no ego involved wouldn't one then be willing to, not only write, but also read other styles than ones own?" No, that's not right, it's not a matter of ego that makes it difficult to both read and write multiple styles. You get used to one particular style, and as a result it is both easier to read and write once you are used to it. Maybe some programmers can read multiple styles completely independently, but I never met anyone who claimed this ability. In fact the typical thing is that people find it MUCH easier to read the style they are used to, just as they are most at home listening to the dialect of English they are most used to. And the resulting conclsuion is that it is desirable if everyone gets used to the same style. You can get used to almost any style, so it is desirable if everyone goes through the excercise of learning one style well for the same style. Mike thinks I am making a big deal out of it. Not surprising, he obviously does not feel that consistency is important here, and thinks it is trivially easy for people to change. OK, but I strongly disagree. I have seem too many people adamantly hold on to the style they first learned and refuse to change. And Mike, it is not that I am not reading the content of the book, which I think highly of, but other things being equal I would choose a book using standard style. One encouraging point is that now I have a number of Ada CS1 books to look at, and generally they are adopting the "standard" Ada style of lower case keywords and Mixed_Case_Identifiers. And no Mike, my students do not seem to need upper case keywords to know what is a keyword and what is not. Furthermore I do not believe that there has ever been a study showing the supposed pedagogical advantage of upper case keywords. Historically, the reason this style is common in the Pascal world is that it is a remnant of the notion of stropping in Algol. In Algol and Algol60, keywords are in boldface, and a way has to be found to indicate this. A common choice was to use upper case to represent bold, and that common style in Algol-60 was imported into the Pascal world. Mike, I know you think I am making a big deal out of a very small point, but that IS the point, I do NOT think that consistency in style across the Ada community is a small point at all, and I am not alone in this thinking. I well remember a Tri-Ada at which one of the plenary speakers said that one of his major objections to Ada was the habit of using upper case identifiers, and there was *huge* applause. Now of course we are not talking about UPPER_CASE_IDENTIFIERS here but just upper case BEGIN END etc, but I think you will find a lot of Ada programmers find this upper case keyword style highly distatesful. Others don't think it matters much. What is a little unusual about Mike's position is that he thinks it is a small point, but is still adamant in insisting on using this nonstandard style in his books. Mike, you are allowed to be insistent on your position, but if you are insistent, then surely it is NOT such a small point :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-11 0:00 ` Lars Farm 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1 sibling, 2 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Lars Farm @ 1996-11-11 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote: > What is a little unusual about Mike's position is that he thinks it is > a small point, but is still adamant in insisting on using this nonstandard > style in his books. Mike, you are allowed to be insistent on your position, > but if you are insistent, then surely it is NOT such a small point :-) I have seen so many styles over the years, and so many heated debates about the subject that I am convinced that this is not a small point to the individual. Most of us have strong opinions. You obviously have. I do[1][2] and Michael Feldman seems to have opinions too. Interestingly all three of us have different opinions on what is and is not readable. There is no right or wrong. There is only opinion. There will never be consensus over an entire user community. I have come to accept that this is the way of things. Look at C or C++. A much larger user base and much larger diversity of styles and naming conventions. This is not because of language (it requires lower case keywords). This is because programmers are human. We want to keep them human, don't we? Allow different styles, learn to live with and even appreciate diversity. This way ones own style will gradually evolve into something better from external influences. Differentiating between keywords, typenames, constants and other kinds of names is something that programming editors do very nicely with syntax highlighting, colour and other tools. Style conventions merely for that, has become less of an issue or even a non issue. Lars [1] For instance, I find Your_Mixed_Case_Identifiers harder to read than all_lower_case_identifiers because lower case looks like ordinary text and Mixed_Case_Identifiers_Looks_Like_Nothing_Else (possibly because no one in his right mind would ever capitalize every word in a swedish sentence - not even a book title - This_Is_Every_Bit_As_Much_Shouting as ALL_UPPER_CASE). Neither can I stand Hungarian notation. Even so, if there is a style guide for an employer or a project, I'll use it because it's their money and the code I write is their code so they should have their style. This doesn't mean that their style is my style. [2] Of course, when confronted with that, most programmers deny any such opinions and use other motives for enforcing their style on others. -- Lars Farm, lars.farm@ite.mh.se ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-11 0:00 ` Lars Farm @ 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Lars Farm 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1 sibling, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Lars says "I have seen so many styles over the years, and so many heated debates about the subject that I am convinced that this is not a small point to the individual. Most of us have strong opinions. You obviously have. I do[1][2] and Michael Feldman seems to have opinions too. Interestingly all three of us have different opinions on what is and is not readable. There is no right or wrong. There is only opinion. There will never be consensus over an entire user community." How little you understand my position! I have no opinion on what is or is not readable. In my experience anyone can get used to anything. My point is that we might as well all get used to the same style, and luckily, as I see from a very large sample of Ada 95 users, the great majority DO use a single style. In my opinion, those in the minority should change -- I did! As for putting up with differing styles, no, I won't. If anyone at ACT insisted on using their own idiosyncratic style, I would tell them they were welcome to do so elsewhere. I don't think the particular style choice we make in the GNAT project is anyone's personal ideal, but we all agree that complete consistency is more important than personal ideal's in this area. It is, for reasons that I have stated in detail before, neither pratical nor desirable for a project to live with a variety of styles if you want the highest possible quality code. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Lars Farm 0 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Lars Farm @ 1996-11-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote: > As for putting up with differing styles, no, I won't. If anyone at > ACT insisted on using their own idiosyncratic style, I would tell > them they were welcome to do so elsewhere. I agree. Different scopes. Organization and every user. When I say "allow different styles", I mean the larger scope. One project / organization / person should not impose its own preferred style on other unrelated organizations / persons. I do not mean that you should accept anything within a project / organization. I can't see how my message could be interpreted like that. I said: > if there is a style guide for an employer or a project, I'll use it > because it's their money and the code I write is their code so they > should have their style. With the little English I know, this seems pretty clear. Perhaps my English isn't good enough? -- Lars Farm, lars.farm@ite.mh.se ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-11 0:00 ` Lars Farm 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1 sibling, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) lars.farm@ite.mh.se (Lars Farm) writes: >I have seen so many styles over the years, and so many heated debates >about the subject that I am convinced that this is not a small point to >the individual. Most of us have strong opinions. You obviously have. I >do[1][2] and Michael Feldman seems to have opinions too. Interestingly >all three of us have different opinions on what is and is not readable. >There is no right or wrong. There is only opinion. There will never be >consensus over an entire user community. "Right" and "wrong" there may not be, but there _are_ "better" and "worse", and for a given set of intended readers, which style is more effective for communication can be objectively measured in fairly obvious ways. I note that my own personal *preference* is for lower_case_identifiers, and for many years have stubbornly refused to follow the one-time C convention of writing macro names in upper case. However, when I write Ada code I *do* follow the AQ&S guidelines, my own preferences notwithstanding. Why? Because when I write C code, I am writing for myself, but when I write Ada code, I am writing to be *read* by other people who have access to the AQ&S, so following the style in the LRM and SQ&S helps me communicate with LRM-and-AQ&S-readers. I would certainly expect the entire Ada community to be aware of the AQ&S guidelines: the price is unbeatable and the advice of _all_ kinds (not just layout and capitalisation) is *extremely* handy. I can think of no Ada programmers who would *not* benefit from reading the AQ&S. It's a bit like natural languages. There are "prestige" dialects, and there are perfectly good dialects which nevertheless confine you to the comic stage. In the Ada community, there is only one "style" dialect which enjoys "prestige", and that is the AQ&S dialect. Write in lower_case, and people say "oh, you're a C hacker, aren't you?" Write in UPPER_CASE, and if you're _lucky_, people will say "didn't you know that the revised AQ&S dropped that recommendation as a mistake; nowadays Ada programmers use Mixed_Case". (Put every letter in lower case except for the first in a file and the first after each semicolon, and you will have a consistent defensible style which will confine you to the comic stage. I have seen this style once.) >I have come to accept that this is the way of things. Look at C or C++. >A much larger user base and much larger diversity of styles and naming >conventions. This is not because of language (it requires lower case >keywords). Actually, it _is_ because of language. Ada is not case sensitive, so it is possible to use the AQ&S conventions when _using_ a package whatever convention was used to _write_ the package. C is case sensitive, so the case convention used by a module author is enforced on the module user, like it or not. >Allow different styles, learn to live with and even appreciate >diversity. P.J.O'Rourke, where are you when I need you? Touchy-feely is all very well when you are talking about works of art, although even then, the extreme artist-centred nature of Modernism resulted in a lot of works of little or no appeal to anyone else. We must never lose sight of the fact that programming languages are *not* natural languages, they are artefacts built to serve a very specific purpose: a programming language is supposed to help human beings communicate algorithmic intentions to other human beings and to machines. Anything which helps this is good. Anything which harms this is bad. The kind of diversity here harms communication, for several reasons. One obvious point is that if X -vs- Y is left as a matter of stylistic variation, then X -vs- Y is not available for *communication*. I once worked on an assembler that was worked on by four other people at the same time. We were using Burroughs Algol. For almost any line in that file, you could tell who wrote it. In fact, since I changed my style during that time, you could tell _when_ parts of it were written. People indented by 2, 3, 4, or 5. Some people wrote "f(x)" for function calls, some wrote "f (x)", some "f( x )", and some "f ( x )". And so it went. Well, there are more effective ways of keeping track of who wrote what (like your initials punched in the last few columns of the card). I agree that there is room for the personal in programming, but why not spend the creativity on writing first-class comments instead? -- Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-11 0:00 ` Lars Farm @ 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1 sibling, 2 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Michael Feldman @ 1996-11-12 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.847671101@merv>, Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> wrote: >world is that it is a remnant of the notion of stropping in Algol. In Algol >and Algol60, keywords are in boldface, and a way has to be found to indicate >this. A common choice was to use upper case to represent bold, and that >common style in Algol-60 was imported into the Pascal world. Correct. And many Pascal authors stuck with it because it works well with beginners, especially if you want the printed code to look just like the code the students see and write on terminals. >Mike, I know you think I am making a big deal out of a very small point, but >that IS the point, I do NOT think that consistency in style across the >Ada community is a small point at all, and I am not alone in this thinking. I find it interesting that out of a couple of dozen reviewers of the two books we are discussing, NONE objected to the upper-case reserved words. These were not Ada dummies; they saw the logic behind what I was doing, and went along with it. Every reviewer was an active teacher of Ada in intro courses. >I well remember a Tri-Ada at which one of the plenary speakers said that one >of his major objections to Ada was the habit of using upper case identifiers, >and there was *huge* applause. Now of course we are not talking about >UPPER_CASE_IDENTIFIERS here but just upper case BEGIN END etc, but I think >you will find a lot of Ada programmers find this upper case keyword style >highly distatesful. So they do not have to use it, just because a couple of intro books do. Nobody is forcing them, and even the most elementary prettyprinter (or even a decent editor macro) can change the case of reserved words anyway. >Others don't think it matters much. I think it matters in dealing with first-term students. If the community is THAT outraged, I'll certainly consider changing it in the next edition. Obviously it won;t happen till then; one doesn;t make that kind of change "on the fly". >What is a little unusual about Mike's position is that he thinks it is >a small point, but is still adamant in insisting on using this nonstandard >style in his books. Mike, you are allowed to be insistent on your position, >but if you are insistent, then surely it is NOT such a small point :-) It's a small point in the larger community; I maintain it is a helpful style for first-year students. Mike Feldman ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Michael Feldman @ 1996-11-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard Pattis 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1 sibling, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Mike says "It's a small point in the larger community; I maintain it is a helpful style for first-year students." OK, so, a claim that this is not just arbitrary, but that there is an objective advantage. OK, Mike, what is the source of evidence for this claim? I have never heard anyone else make this claim, or seen any evidence to back it up -- sure some Pascal books use this style, but as I explained there is understandable historic precedent, and you cannot assume that because a book uses this style that it agrees with the point Mike is making. P.S. Mike cannot say that he was completely unaware that anyone might object to this style, he has known for a long time that I object, but it is a fair point that no one else reviewing the book did. So far on CLA, no one has actively supported the MF style, the contributions to this thread are divided between those who agree with me that it is a pity that the book is inconsistent with the most commonly recommended style, and those who think it does not matter. It would be interesting to hear from anyone else who agrees that the style of upper case keywords is preferable for teaching. In my class, I see that most students use the standard style (I encourage but do not insist on it, I should have insisted). A few students who are used to upper case keyword style in Pascal persist in using it, and a few who are new to Ada and Pascal copy the style in the book. Some other students know Pascal well, but have learned from books with lower case keywords, so remain in that style (in general people tend to stick with whatever style they learn first in my experience, even if imported from another language). ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard Pattis 1996-11-19 0:00 ` Do-While Jones ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Richard Pattis @ 1996-11-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Since this discussion is still ongoing (and civil), I'd like to support Mike's position on capitalized reserved words with the following observations, as a long time CS1 instructor. I'll try to be short and non-redundant; but I have read only most, not all the messages on this topic. 1) On the Ada Standard for reserved words (my LRM has been in moving boxes for 4 months and won't be available for another 3): If I remember correctly, the reserved words are not only lower case, but appear in bold face. Thus, the intent is that they stand out. If most Ada IDEs (used by CS1 students) support a bold face convention (both in the editor and when printing source files) then I'd say to use that style; but if not (I haven't written Ada for 2 years, so I'm not up on the technology), all caps is a good way to make reserved words stand out. 2) And, reserved words do need to stand out in CS1. Much of the course concerns learning the meanings of these words, which also act as roadmaps to beginners for understanding code - because much of CS1 concerns algorithms embodied in (nested) control structures. As students progress, abstractions start to play a larger role, and the importance of reserved words diminishes, and so can their prominence. 3) Final comment to all CS1 instructors: show these discussions to your students. Personally, I'm less interested in the outcome of the discussion (who wins) than seeing Ada luminaries (and passionate ones at that) marshaling their mental powers to debate issues of style, and increase our awareness of the importance of writing readable code. I frequently tell students that for individual projects, I don't care what style they use, so long as it is consistent and can be defended - and I do ask them to defend theirs and criticize mine when the styles diverge. Again, I am less interested in who is "right" and more interested in whether the students can present a well reasoned argument about the appropriatensess of the style they selected. That skill is more important than learning the "right" style in CS1. Rich PS: I'm now in Pittsburgh (although I still read newsgroups at UW, where I happened to see this post) where my e-mail account is pattis@cs.cmu.edu ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard Pattis @ 1996-11-19 0:00 ` Do-While Jones 1996-11-20 0:00 ` John English 1996-11-21 0:00 ` FerretWoman 2 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Do-While Jones @ 1996-11-19 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Rich makes the valid point: > >2) And, reserved words do need to stand out in CS1. Much of the course >concerns learning the meanings of these words, which also act as roadmaps >to beginners for understanding code - because much of CS1 concerns algorithms >embodied in (nested) control structures. As students progress, abstractions >start to play a larger role, and the importance of reserved words diminishes, >and so can their prominence. > > That is certainly true from a student/instructor point of view. But I say, "Different strokes for different folks." As a maintainer of software, I would rather have the reserved words fade into obscurity. That is, I prefer procedure VIRUS is begin DESTROY_THE_DISK; end VIRUS; to PROCEDURE virus IS BEGIN destroy_the_disk; END; From my point of view, reserved words are just noise that must be removed to obtain the information. When reserved words are emphasized I must expend more effort to ignore them. One of the wonderful things about Ada is that she doesn't put programmers in a style straitjacket. You can use whatever style emphasizes the things that are important to you. Do-While Jones -- +--------------------------------+ | Know Ada | | [Ada's Portrait] | | Will Travel | | wire do_while@ridgecrest.ca.us | +--------------------------------+ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard Pattis 1996-11-19 0:00 ` Do-While Jones @ 1996-11-20 0:00 ` John English 1996-11-20 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1996-11-21 0:00 ` FerretWoman 2 siblings, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: John English @ 1996-11-20 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Richard Pattis (pattis@cs.washington.edu) wrote: : Since this discussion is still ongoing (and civil), I'd like to support Mike's : position on capitalized reserved words with the following observations, as : a long time CS1 instructor. I'll try to be short and non-redundant; but I : have read only most, not all the messages on this topic. : [...snip...] OK, here's another contrary view to keep the pot boiling. If you use all-caps, procedure HELLO_WORLD might be mistyped near-invisibly as procedure HELL0_W0RLD which would give rise to some very puzzling (to a beginner) errors. However, procedure Hello_World and procedure Hell0_W0rld are visibly distinct... (Oh well, I suppose I ought to make the counter-argument for fairness' sake: procedure HELLO is easy to distinguish from procedure HE110... :-) --------------------------------------------------------------- John English | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk Senior Lecturer | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je Dept. of Computing | fax: (+44) 1273 642405 University of Brighton | --------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-20 0:00 ` John English @ 1996-11-20 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 0 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1996-11-20 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <56uqhq$5tf@saturn.brighton.ac.uk>, je@bton.ac.uk (John English) writes: > OK, here's another contrary view to keep the pot boiling. > If you use all-caps, procedure HELLO_WORLD might be mistyped > near-invisibly as procedure HELL0_W0RLD which would give rise > to some very puzzling (to a beginner) errors. However, procedure > Hello_World and procedure Hell0_W0rld are visibly distinct... > (Oh well, I suppose I ought to make the counter-argument for > fairness' sake: procedure HELLO is easy to distinguish from > procedure HE110... :-) Both of those possibilities make me prefer languages which do not declare variables behind my back in response to a reference... ...and of course prefer compilers which provide more than a binary indication regarding whether errors were found in my program :-) Larry Kilgallen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard Pattis 1996-11-19 0:00 ` Do-While Jones 1996-11-20 0:00 ` John English @ 1996-11-21 0:00 ` FerretWoman 1996-11-22 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 2 siblings, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: FerretWoman @ 1996-11-21 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) pattis@cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis) wrote: >1) On the Ada Standard for reserved words (my LRM has been in moving boxes >for 4 months and won't be available for another 3): If I remember correctly, >the reserved words are not only lower case, but appear in bold face. Thus, the >intent is that they stand out. Yes, I believe they are in bold in the LRM >2) And, reserved words do need to stand out in CS1. Much of the course >concerns learning the meanings of these words, which also act as roadmaps >to beginners for understanding code - because much of CS1 concerns algorithms >embodied in (nested) control structures. As students progress, abstractions >start to play a larger role, and the importance of reserved words diminishes, >and so can their prominence. >3) Final comment to all CS1 instructors: show these discussions to your >students. As a student currently learning Ada, I must admit that I really do like having the reserved words in capital letters. It makes it easier to not only remember the words, but also what order to put them and what they do in the program. We are required to use capital letters for reserved words in any code we turn in. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-21 0:00 ` FerretWoman @ 1996-11-22 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-24 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson 0 siblings, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-22 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Ferretwoman@worldnet.att.net (FerretWoman) writes: >As a student currently learning Ada, I must admit that I really do >like having the reserved words in capital letters. It makes it easier >to not only remember the words, but also what order to put them and >what they do in the program. >We are required to use capital letters for reserved words in any code >we turn in. This is perhaps the most valuable posting so far; we now have *evidence* that one student benefits from upper case keywords. However, one thing is not clear. I take it that you have never been taught Ada using the LRM/AQ&S "keywords are lower case, everything else is Mixed" style. Why do you say it is "being in upper case" that helps, rather than "being visibly distinct"? In the LRM/AQ&S style, keywords and other words never ever look alike: all and only keywords begin with a lower case letter. What exactly _is_ the style you are being taught with? If keywords are upper case, and other words are Mixed case, I would have expected that to be *harder*, because then you have to look at the 2nd letter to see whether it's a keyword or not, whereas with the LRM/AQ&S style, it is always enough to look at the 1st letter. Also, you do not tell us what editor(s) you use to view/modify/create Ada code. On the black and white screens I use, editors can put keywords in bold or underline them. On the colour screens many students use, editors can put keywords in a special colour. We have an Ada->HTML filter so that all the Ada code I handed out to 2nd year students were printed with bold keywords &c, and could be viewed on-line the same way. (Or, with lynx, with underlined keywords.) Nor do you tell us whether the style you were using was the same as the style in the textbook, or whether you were ever shown code in the LRM/AQ&S style. So it is a little bit hard to figure out what exactly your evidence is evidence _of_. Does it, for example, mean that - someone being taught from a textbook with upper case keywords - using only non-colouring editors (e.g. not Emacs, not Alpha, not an IDE) - and not ever being shown material in the LRM/AQ&S style - finds *some* visible distinction between keywords and other words useful, and doesn't know whether some other distinction might be as good or better? Please don't take this as an attack. I think your posting was an excellent thing, and I really would be grateful if you would fill in a bit more detail. -- Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-22 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-24 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson 0 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Fergus Henderson @ 1996-11-24 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >If keywords are upper case, and other words are Mixed case, I would have >expected that to be *harder*, because then you have to look at the 2nd >letter to see whether it's a keyword or not, whereas with the LRM/AQ&S >style, it is always enough to look at the 1st letter. People don't read one letter at a time. If you show someone a word for a very brief time period, my guess is that they will probably have more chance of noticing whether the word is in ALL UPPERCASE than they have of telling you whether the first letter was uppercase. -- Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au> | "I have always known that the pursuit WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh> | of excellence is a lethal habit" PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1 sibling, 1 reply; 47+ messages in thread From: Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes: >I find it interesting that out of a couple of dozen reviewers of the >two books we are discussing, NONE objected to the upper-case reserved >words. These were not Ada dummies; they saw the logic behind what I was >doing, and went along with it. Every reviewer was an active teacher of >Ada in intro courses. There is a non-sequitur here. From the fact that they did not *object*, you *cannot* infer that they saw your logic, or that they "went along with it". If they specifically *said* in their reviews that they saw the logic or were happy with the result (as opposed to reluctantly accepting it because of the book's other merits) then you can infer these things. The most you can infer from silence is that they didn't consider it _enough_ of a problem to object about. I also note a little bit of selection here. Concerning the book "Ada 95 Problem Solving and Program Design", which is the only CS1 book of yours I've seen, one reviewer did *not* see the logic, did *not* go along, and *did* complain. I know, because that was me. Perhaps you are referring to pre-publication reviewers. Again, I must stress that Feldman's books have great merits. My position is like the Frenchman in the 18th century who was about to propose to a woman when he saw a louse crawl out of her wig. Sometimes small things loom large. >I think it matters in dealing with first-term students. If the community >is THAT outraged, I'll certainly consider changing it in the next edition. There are three issues here, and they are different. (1) Will protest die down if you make a change? (2) Will more people buy your books if you make a change? (3) Will students learn better if you make a change? You are insisting on your present scheme because of (3), and you are exactly right in your attitude. If you are *factually* right as well; if someone can come up with good-looking *evidence* that putting keywords in caps is better for our students than putting keywords in lower case; then I will switch to your still and beg you to stick to it. If. >It's a small point in the larger community; I maintain it is a helpful >style for first-year students. I can't speak for anyone else, but you can silence me *completely* on this topic and convert me to your style *by showing me the experimental evidence*. It should be a fairly straightforward experiment to perform. (Although double-blind is clearly out of the question...) -- Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 0 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Michael Feldman @ 1996-11-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <56paj4$bu0$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>, Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote: >There is a non-sequitur here. >From the fact that they did not *object*, >you *cannot* infer that they saw your logic, >or that they "went along with it". Some were silent; others explicitly said the choice was OK. >If they specifically *said* in their reviews that they >saw the logic or were happy with the result >(as opposed to reluctantly accepting it because of the >book's other merits) then you can infer these things. Right. >The most you can infer from silence is that they didn't >consider it _enough_ of a problem to object about. Right, and they were paid (by the publisher) to object if they saw anything worth objecting about. >I also note a little bit of selection here. >Concerning the book "Ada 95 Problem Solving and Program Design", >which is the only CS1 book of yours I've seen, >one reviewer did *not* see the logic, did *not* go along, >and *did* complain. I know, because that was me. >Perhaps you are referring to pre-publication reviewers. Yes, sorry - I thought it was obvious. Post-publication reviews are good feedback for the next edition, but next editions typically happen several years apart. >Again, I must stress that Feldman's books have great merits. >My position is like the Frenchman in the 18th century who was >about to propose to a woman when he saw a louse crawl out of >her wig. Sometimes small things loom large. True enough, and I've certainly heard everyone's points here. In a published book (as opposed to, say, a web site:-)) major changes happen with each new _edition_. Typos get fixed when the book is _reprinted_ (and the book is now in its 3rd printing), but a wholesale change like the keyword capitalization is not a typo. >There are three issues here, and they are different. >(1) Will protest die down if you make a change? There will always be something to complain about in a book. We'll have to wait a couple of years to see, because that's how long it'll be till there's any change. >(2) Will more people buy your books if you make a change? Dunno. We'll see how the various competitors make out. Certainly if some current or potential adopter says "we're switching to Mr. <name>'s book, and Feldman's horrible shouted keywords is an important reason", that will be pretty good evidence to answer yes to your question. While I am certainly happy when individual programmers buy my stuff in Borders or other "trade bookstores", they are not the main market for a book like this. CS1 books are written for higher-ed courses, and it's the _teachers_ that adopt them for their classes, not the students. >(3) Will students learn better if you make a change? This cries out for a controlled study, but I'll leave that to someone else. Meanwhile, I've explained _why_ I made the choice I did, so we might as well move on to more interesting things because no change will happen for a couple of years anyway. >You are insisting on your present scheme because of (3), and you are >exactly right in your attitude. If you are *factually* right as well; >if someone can come up with good-looking *evidence* that putting keywords >in caps is better for our students than putting keywords in lower case; >then I will switch to your still and beg you to stick to it. As I said, many Pascal teachers have used this style, and not just for historical reasons. I'm following that tradition (at least in this edition). >I can't speak for anyone else, but you can silence me *completely* on >this topic and convert me to your style *by showing me the experimental >evidence*. It should be a fairly straightforward experiment to perform. >(Although double-blind is clearly out of the question...) Well, it would be pretty hard, actually, because you'd need two otherwise-identical versions of all the materials, including the book - one with my keyword style, the other with lowercase. In a controlled study (I've done some...) one needs to be careful to hold everything constant but the variable you're measuring. It's a nice idea, but in this case it's logistically intractable. Can we put this issue to bed, finally? >Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! I agree, and I like Australia's compulsory voting, especially after our ridiculously low turnout here. I'd settle for a none-of-the-above line on the ballot. More than 50% here voted that line by staying home.:-) >Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci. Mike Feldman ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-10 0:00 ` Lars Farm @ 1996-11-14 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1 sibling, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Richard A. O'Keefe @ 1996-11-14 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes: >So use a different book... tastes vary. I think the thing that needs to be made plain is that Feldman's critics on this topic are not enemies, but "disappointed lovers", people who _want_ to use his books but for this reason _can't_. >Rear-guard action? Gimmea break! Damaging to what? To whom? C'mon - >the RM leaves it up to individuals to set a lexical style. But it uses a specific lexical style _itself_. >It's NOT a rear-guard action, merely a pedagogical technique. When I'm >writing for beginners, I use the capitalized style; when I'm not, I don;t. >Jeez - not everything has to be so _political_. I'm not opposed to >the "standard" style; I just bought in to teaching beginners using a >style adopted by hundreds of Pascal teachers. I note that the last textbook we used when we were teaching Pascal was "Foundations of Computer Science" by Aho & Ullman. I just checked. Lower case keywords throughout. Not even boldface. What you see is what you type. Jensen & Wirth, of course, used lower case. Kruse uses lower case. Fisher & Reges use lower case. The UCSD Pascal Handbook for the P-system (Clark & Koehler) uses lower case. None of this shows that lower case is a consensus amongst Pascal books, but it _does_ show that upper case is _not_ a consensus for Pascal books. >You are right - there are lots of issues, so why do you persist in >fighting this battle? Because people *want* to use your books, but because they don't fit in with other valued books, including the LRM and the AQ&S guides and all the other code the students are going to see, they fell they *can't.* If I thought the books were bad books on other grounds, I for one wouldn't _care_ about the style. >If the lexical style is really sufficient reason to adopt or reject a >text, I'd say you're not reading for content... Unfair. Not reading *JUST* for content, maybe. Students in this part of the world use the style they were first taught, and if a later lecturer wants something different, they regard the _lecturer_ as incompetent and pedantic, and don't do it. Now that high fees and 'the era of accountability' are upon us, if a course used inconsistent styles in two years, an internal audit would probably demand a change. I've just been at a meeting this morning where we were told that lecturers no longer have autonomy in designing and marking their subjects. When I learned Fortran and Algol and COBOL and PL/I, nobody dreamed that we might need special visual clues to help us tell which were the keywords; the keypunches had a single case on their keyboards, the printers had a single case on their drums or chains, and students were deemed to be sufficiently literate to cope with a handful of special words that occurred at the beginning of lines. I have seen hundreds of students successfully taught these programming languages with a single alphabetic case and no "looks" variations. When did students' brains rot so that they needed _that_ particular crutch more than any other distinction that case might make? Once again, I reckon that our students are, by the standards of my youth, pretty dim and helpless, but "which are the keywords" is something they have *no* trouble with. -- Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-10-29 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-10-30 0:00 ` Michael Feldman @ 1996-10-31 0:00 ` Tom Pastuszak 1 sibling, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Tom Pastuszak @ 1996-10-31 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Robert Dewar wrote: >The Barnes book IS an Ada book. If you don't know how to design >programs, and want to learn, and want to >learn using Ada, you will find Feldman's book much more appropriate >than >Barnes. If you know how to design programs and want to learn >specifically >about Ada, then the Barnes book is much more appropriate. It is rather hard to avoid Barnes, for, as I recall, the Ada 95 Rationale is a primarily Barnes' written document (p. iii of the Rationale). In the past I have preferred Cohen's first book, using Ada as a Second Language, although it is a bit large. I have not yet the heart to read his recent book, although I've had it checked out of the library for a month. Regarding Barnes, I do not understand his committment to Ada 95, gathering from the introductory sections of his recent Ada 95 book. For example, he refers to all this recent focus on OO as promoting "abstraction leak" -- whatever that means. I have achieved good success with the following: 1. Read the R. Riele articles in JOOP. These are surgical introductions to the important features of Ada 95. They are on par with what the best writers on C++ have done for that language. 2. Look at as much Ada 95 code as you can, and cross reference to the LRM as required. 3. Start reading the Ada 95 Rationale, and when you run out of wind, don't fight it -- stop reading and code some examples with the attitude "what can I do with this"? Don't wait until you have pigged out on a bunch of information to set down some examples. I use a random number generator to determine which section of the Rationale to read each day. Otherwise it is rather laborious to plow throught the whole thing. 4. The Lovelace tutorial can help. It is good for relieving fear of the language. Tom Pastuszak -- @Pastukhov Russian: patr. from the occupational term pastukh shepherd (from pasti to graze (trans.) ultimately a cogn. of L pascere; cf. PASTOR). Cogns.: Ukr.: Pastushenko (dim.). Beloruss.: Pastushik, Pastushonok (dims.). Pol: Pastusiak; Pastuszko (dim.). -- Oxford Dictionary of Surnames, p. 409. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-10-26 0:00 Lars Lundgren 1996-10-28 0:00 ` Rapicault Pascal @ 1996-10-28 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1996-11-04 0:00 ` John English 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Wolfgang Gellerich 3 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1996-10-28 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <32723F6A.54A3@dtek.chalmers.se>, Lars Lundgren <d95lars@dtek.chalmers.se> writes: > Can anyone out there recomend a good Ada95 book. > I would like to use it to learn the language as well as a reference. > > I would like it to be correct and complete. > > I have seen a list of ten good java books presented in comp.lang.java. > > Is there a corresponding list for Ada book? http://www.adahome.com will lead you to a list of many Ada books, and reviews for some of them. I would think it highly unlikely that any author would have an Ada book published and neglect to make sure it is listed on http://www.adahome.com. Larry Kilgallen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-10-26 0:00 Lars Lundgren 1996-10-28 0:00 ` Rapicault Pascal 1996-10-28 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 1996-11-04 0:00 ` John English 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Wolfgang Gellerich 3 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: John English @ 1996-11-04 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Lars Lundgren (d95lars@dtek.chalmers.se) wrote: : Can anyone out there recomend a good Ada95 book. : I would like to use it to learn the language as well as a reference. (Uh oh. An excuse to blow my own trumpet... :-) You could have a look at "Ada 95: the Craft of Object-Oriented Programming" by yours truly (Prentice Hall). To get a flavour of the book, visit http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je/adacraft which gives you the table of contents, preface, three sample chapters, and so on. --------------------------------------------------------------- John English | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk Senior Lecturer | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je Dept. of Computing | fax: (+44) 1273 642405 University of Brighton | --------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
* Re: Looking for good Ada95 book 1996-10-26 0:00 Lars Lundgren ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 1996-11-04 0:00 ` John English @ 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Wolfgang Gellerich 3 siblings, 0 replies; 47+ messages in thread From: Wolfgang Gellerich @ 1996-11-06 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <32723F6A.54A3@dtek.chalmers.se>, Lars Lundgren <d95lars@dtek.chalmers.se> writes: |> Can anyone out there recomend a good Ada95 book. |> I would like to use it to learn the language as well as a reference. |> |> I would like it to be correct and complete. How about "Programming in Ada 95" by John Barnes ? Regards, Wolfgang +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Wolfgang Gellerich gellerich@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de | |University of Stuttgart; | |Informatics Department; Programming Languages Group; | |Breitwiesenstrasse 20-22; D-70565 Stuttgart; Germany | |Tel. +49-711-7816213 Fax +49-711-7816380 | |(Amateur Radio : DJ3TZ@DB0RBS.#BW.DEU.EU) ACM Member No. 4436341 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 47+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1996-11-24 0:00 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 47+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 1996-11-12 0:00 Looking for good Ada95 book Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-93 -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below -- 1996-10-26 0:00 Lars Lundgren 1996-10-28 0:00 ` Rapicault Pascal [not found] ` <01bbc5d8$a3b24e00$6a9148a6@cornerstone.mydomain.org> 1996-10-29 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-10-30 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-02 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Robert A Duff 1996-11-03 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Norman H. Cohen 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Jerry Petrey 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Michael F Brenner 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1996-11-04 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-11 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Mark Shaw 1996-11-06 0:00 ` James Thiele 1996-11-08 0:00 ` Stephen Leake 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Robert A Duff 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-09 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-10 0:00 ` Lars Farm 1996-11-10 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-11 0:00 ` Lars Farm 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Lars Farm 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-12 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard Pattis 1996-11-19 0:00 ` Do-While Jones 1996-11-20 0:00 ` John English 1996-11-20 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1996-11-21 0:00 ` FerretWoman 1996-11-22 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-24 0:00 ` Fergus Henderson 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-11-18 0:00 ` Michael Feldman 1996-11-14 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe 1996-10-31 0:00 ` Tom Pastuszak 1996-10-28 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1996-11-04 0:00 ` John English 1996-11-06 0:00 ` Wolfgang Gellerich
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