From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "(see below)" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada in teaching Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:03:49 +0100 Message-ID: References: <851f477d-c5a4-4c87-b930-4a47ba508579@h8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> <4a5ce82c$0$32682$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net> <4a5d17f2$0$30231$9b4e6d93@newsspool1.arcor-online.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net XYP+jJntY4t2PRpPnrzxSAfG3zVSC3Qw9joE/QZla07uQiH76l Cancel-Lock: sha1:yVsPc+k4DWwj3FLAvUBLnXygp18= User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/12.19.0.090515 Thread-Topic: Ada in teaching Thread-Index: AcoE6Bx39qYFm/yfhki3pm+HvhrTZA== Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:7067 Date: 2009-07-15T02:03:49+01:00 List-Id: On 15/07/2009 00:42, in article 4a5d17f2$0$30231$9b4e6d93@newsspool1.arcor-online.net, "Georg Bauhaus" wrote: > Could there be "canonical Ada" good for teaching? > Some subset possibly extracted from successful > introductory courses/books. Such as, maybe, John English's? > (Does someone know whether Robert Dewar's plan still exists to > collect (his) teaching efforts at NYU into a book on Ada?) Introductory courses must teach a subset, even of Pascal. The make-up of the subset is determined by the need for a digestible presentation of the material to be covered in the time available. It is also influenced by the teacher's theological position, e.g., whether to start with an OOP slant or not. These considerations (especially course time) don't leave much wiggle room. Second-level courses start to tackle the tricky stuff. > Norman H. Cohen (author of "Ada as a Second Language") > has been involved in designing Java generics (Don't > know more). As was an ex-colleague of mine (Phil Wadler). > Java arrays cannot fully take advantage of Java generics, > in particular compile time checking is basically off, > so the sloppy base type system strikes again. > Another language corner case that I imagine must be explained > to students of the (Java) language at length... The extensions that have been made to Java to try to fit it for applications to which it is inherently unsuited are all laughably bad, in my view. -- Bill Findlay chez blueyonder.co.uk