Re: Why is Ada a good choice for an ambitious beginner to programming

[Bill Findlay <yaldnifw@blueyonder.co.uk>]

On 2/1/03 10:04, in article 3e140e05.3654845@news.demon.co.uk, "John McCabe"
<john@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> On Sun, 22 Dec 2002 14:40:45 +0000, Bill Findlay
> <yaldnifw@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

>> 400 not-especially-endowed-with-genius CS1 students have
>> learned to program using Ada 95 at Glasgow University
>> every year since 1996.
> 
> Coming from the (presumably) the bloke who co-wrote one of the
> definitive Pascal manuals of the late '70s, early '80s, I would

C'est moi. (Blushes.)

> suggest this is quite an endorsement for Ada over Pascal.

Ada is easier for beginners than Pascal, because its syntax and semantics
are much more consistent. In fact, it's just a better language, full stop.
The Hoare/Dijkstra barb about Pascal being an improvement on its successors
is nonsense. Hoare's list (in "The Emperor's Old Clothes") of the supposed
advantages of Pascal can be seen, in retrospect, as a catalogue of the
reasons for Pascal's demise.

> For what it's worth, I was taught Pascal at Glasgow University in
> around 1983 (as part of an Electronics Engineering degree).

It took ten years for EE to switch from FORTRAN to Pascal. Fifteen years
further on, when CS adopted Ada 95, they tried to take EE with them, but
without success. AFAIK they are still stuck with Pascal. (In fairness to EE,
they did see through C, and did not want it taught to their beginners.)

It was interesting to stand in the lab and watch CS (Ada) and EE (Pascal)
beginners working side by side. One day, about week 6 of term, the CS
students (using GNAT and AdaGraph) had nearly all successfully written a
program that animated balls bouncing around in a box. The EE students (using
Turbo) were nearly all grappling unsuccessfully with a trivial text-oriented
read-process-output loop.

-- 
Bill-Findlay chez blue-yonder.co.uk ("-" => "")