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 X-Google-Thread: 103376,a1cabe8166ddcbb8 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-12-24 16:33:55 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!news-hub.cableinet.net!blueyonder!newspeer1-gui.server.ntli.net!ntli.net!newsfep1-gui.server.ntli.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail From: "chris.danx" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130 X-Accept-Language: en, en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Resources for teaching a child Ada ? References: <1fsh0vss3dblbs9hm21vendb9arhvvrk90@4ax.com> In-Reply-To: <1fsh0vss3dblbs9hm21vendb9arhvvrk90@4ax.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Inktomi-Trace: pc2-bbrg1-4-cust73.renf.cable.ntl.com 1040776434 9623 80.4.70.73 (25 Dec 2002 00:33:54 GMT) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2002 00:36:29 +0000 NNTP-Posting-Host: 80.1.224.4 X-Complaints-To: abuse@ntlworld.com X-Trace: newsfep1-gui.server.ntli.net 1040776434 80.1.224.4 (Wed, 25 Dec 2002 00:33:54 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2002 00:33:54 GMT Organization: ntl News Service Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:32291 Date: 2002-12-25T00:36:29+00:00 List-Id: faust wrote: > My 12 year old wants to learn Ada > ( He actually wanted to learn Java or Pascal but I convinced him that > Ada is superior to both. I'm saying nothing about Pascal (haven't used a modern variant, still like TP though), but will say that Java is as good as Ada depending on what you want to do. For some things Ada sucks, for some things Java sucks. They're not superiour to one another just better at one thing which the other isn't. I would agree that Ada is (IMO) a better teaching language *in this context*, because you don't have to get into OO early, (java) packages, shallow copying, or stuff like that. Just my opinion (no flame war please). I often think language superiority is 90% personal preference, 9% problem domain, 1% technical. > Could anyone recommend a suitable text ? > (Preferably online. ) No text (though John English's online text is very good - see Adapower for a link), but something to make it more interesting. Jewl or AdaGraph*! The thing that kept my interest when I was learning to program (around the same age) was graphics and stuff like that. Text input interested me for all of five minutes, then I wanted to do something fun and playing with the graphics windows in Metacomco Basic (Atari ST) was it. After a month of Basic I got a pc with turbo pascal and the first thing I did was explore graph.tpu and do mad stuff with circles, lines, squares and what not. Make graphs of inputs and things like that. The tutors at Uni knew that people liked graphics, gui stuff and exploited it to make it fun. People hated the text io stuff but the graphics stuff they did held their interest. We had a number of problems to solve which people liked. One was to navigate a map with square cells and walls to get to the exit, another to land a rocket on a pad from a (fixed) launch position - in fact there was a crate of beer for the one who landed it in the shortest time; probably not a suitable reward for a twelve year old :) - and the other was planets orbiting the sun (just the earth, then with the earth and moon, then the same with darksides on the earth and moon - the darkside of the moon was tricky). Merry Christmas, Chris p.s. AdaGraph -> Jewl might be a good progression. Adagraph is just drawing in a window, but Jewl is a (simple) GUI toolkit. Once your son had some experience with Ada he might want to explore GUIs and Jewl would be good for that, it's very easy to work with and doesn't bog you down with some of the concepts of bigger GUI kits (which is a task in itself). *if it's Linux/Unix you'd need to write your own or write a wrapper round some GtkAda stuff to make it simple enough for a beginner to get to grips with. -- for personal replies change spamoff to chris