Re: Grabbing Mindshare in the Student Population for Ada

[byhoe@greenlime.com (Adrian Hoe)]

Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message news:<3CEB102E.75D7D32@adaworks.com>...
> When I started teaching Ada at Naval Postgraduate
> School, the number of students enrolling for the
> class was so low it was not guaranteed there would
> be a class.
> 
> With the help of a friendly professor who had been
> there for a long time, we were able to put together
> enough for one class.
> 
> After that class, students began to tell other students
> about how much fun Ada was.   We are ever so
> gradually making progress at increasing mind-share,
> as the caption put it.
> 
> My class is called, Ada As A Second Language, so the
> students have almost all suffered through the horrors
> of C++ by the time they get to me.    The sign on my
> office door says, "C++ Is Its Own Virus" and few
> of my students disagree with that sentiment.
> 
> Just today, one of my students from the electrical engineering
> curriculum said how much he was enjoying Ada.    I have even
> been able to persuade some students to use Ada for their
> Master's Degree Thesis.
> 
> At lunch today, with a group of Marines from one of my other
> classes, and one Marine visitor, the visitor mentioned how
> some project was being converted from Ada to Java.   I said,
> "That's a pretty stupid decision."    He asked, "What would be
> better?"   I replied, "Ada 95."  He said that everything he had
> heard about Ada was pretty negative.    This is an indication
> that there is still a lot of ignorance out there in the decision
> loop.
> 
> We can, if we teach Ada well, grab some mind-share.  However,
> if the students are confronted with negative attitudes when they
> try to use Ada (or recommend Ada) once they have graduated,
> it is pretty discouraging.    On the bright side, some of my
> students will be in decision-making jobs when they graduate,
> and they may be able to help turn the tide of stupidity that
> characterizes so many programming language decisions.
> 
> If you can teach Ada well and help the students enjoy it, all
> the better.   I am seeing the results of teaching it badly in
> so many places.

I was having negative feedback from a local university in Malaysia,
UTM, the only university here that teach Ada. Mainly, the students
can't see the benefits of Ada and are obfuscated by promotion and
words of mouth. The lecturer came to me and asked for some suggestion
how he can introduce Ada more successfully. Judging that his
confidence had been shaken, I told him to stick to Ada and show his
confident to his students and be more persistent. I also told him to
provide comparisons between Ada and other languages. He did it and his
confident is back on again. :) He now will ask students who are not
convinced in Ada to compete with his students who learn Ada. And the
result is great.


> By the way, I expect to have an update of my little booklet,
> Ada Distilled, available for free download sometime in the
> next couple of weeks.   I have been getting great feedback on
> it from all over the world.    Apparently it has become useful
> for a lot of people who are trying to learn Ada on their own.
> I will announce it here when it was on adapower and adaic.org.

BTW, Richard, why not include some comparisons in your booklet? If you
need some examples, I am most willing to provide to you.

> Richard Riehle


-- 
                                       -- Adrian Hoe
                                       -- http://adrianhoe.com