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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!think.com!cass.ma02.bull.com!mips2!bull.bull.fr!corton!mcsun!sunic!ugle.unit.no!nuug!ifi!enag From: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Yearly Fees for Support of Compiler Message-ID: Date: 12 May 91 22:00:55 GMT References: <1991May3> <20600104@inmet> <1991May9.072802.4925@netcom.COM> <3054@cod.NOSC.MIL> <1991May10.055918.3595@netcom.COM> Sender: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum) Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway In-Reply-To: jls@netcom.COM's message of 10 May 91 05: 59:18 GMT List-Id: In article <1991May10.055918.3595@netcom.COM>, Jim Showalter writes: I'd be the first to agree that Ada has made inroads. On the other hand, Borland shipped something like half a million copies of Turbo C++ last year. You do the math. IMNSHO, you confuse quantity with quality. The real issue is, given half a million copies of Turbo C++, will there be a larger quantity of quality programmers using C++ than there will be quality programmers using Ada? I'd say quality programmers are independent of language used, and that programming is so incredibly difficult for many people to get right that they may need some hand-holding to get there. C++ lets people do useful things earlier than Ada does. WordPerfect lets people do useful things earlier than an SGML system does, too. C++ is simpler to learn and handle. WordPerfect is thought to be simple to learn and handle. Even though I admire C++ a lot and hoped it had covered more ground, it has yet to make it to the same size projects for which Ada is used. Even though some claim that WordPerfect can do what they need, I don't think the choice between an SGML system and WordPerfect for a government documents database is very hard. (The analogy is not to scale.) My point is that Ada is more than a language, it's a conceptual frame- work. Teaching that framework with a simpler, smaller language so programmers can get the "hands-on" experience which so many of them seem to require seems to be the right way to go, and then migrate to the "real thing" as the ideas that helped shape Ada can be grasped by the students from their own experiences, rather than textbook examples and case studies they can't relate to. Another point is that there's going to be _hordes_ of illiterate pro- grammers with C++ experience and no idea what they're doing. (Same goes for C, of course.) Teaching the proper mind-set to such people is going to require more than it would have taken to teach someone with no experience the same ideas. (My experience tells me that educators have a lot of work to do in this area.) -- [Erik Naggum] Professional Programmer Naggum Software Electronic Text 0118 OSLO, NORWAY Computer Communications +47-2-836-863