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

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

On 6/1/03 10:05, in article 3e195055.2269693@news.demon.co.uk, "John McCabe"
<john@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
 
> Having used Ada for so long now, it's quite funny going
> back and seeing how different Pascal really is (and how limited the
> early ISO standard Pascal was)! [...] Funnily enough, VAX Pascal had
> many nice features that are essentially inherent in Ada - one in
> particular I remember is being able to determine the size and limits
> of arrays that have been passed in to a subprogram (this may be in
> Turbo Pascal as well).

Actually this feature was introduced by ISO (ex-BSI) standard Pascal.
It was the sole piece of new language designed by the (excessively!) purist
BSI group, and was included only because both Wirth and Hoare wanted it.

>> Ada is easier for beginners than Pascal, because its syntax and semantics
>> are much more consistent.
> 
> I agree with this, but you definitely need to go for one of the books
> written especially for teaching Ada *and* programming together. Norman
> Cohen's book, "Ada as a second language", for example is not designed
> to do that yet is (IMO) one of the best Ada books around. Ada comes
> across as being such a large language that, without a good reference
> guide to what you *need* to know, it could be very easy for a
> beginning programmer to get lost in all the stuff you don't need to know.

That's spot-on.
 
>> It was interesting to stand in the lab and watch CS (Ada) and EE (Pascal)
>> beginners working side by side. [...]
> 
> Interesting, but not really a very good example of why Ada is better
> than Pascal. It could easily just be a mindset issue - people
> generally don't enter EE courses to learn (or advance their)
> programming skills. I would bet that most of your CS students have
> done significantly more computer programming than the EE students
> prior to starting their university courses.

Perhaps, but even if they have done programming at school it is not
necessarily a help to them (8-). As I said in another reply:

"... I don't want to make too much of this.
Certainly there were other significant differences between the groups that
accounted for much of the disparity, but I'm quite sure the EE group would
have made better progress with the easier language (i.e. Ada).
That's the irony."

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