Need "Ammo" for the choice Ada vs. C++

[dww@math.fu-berlin.de (Debora Weber-Wulff)]

I don't need flames or smart remarks, but some good solid
arguments!

Friday was the first day of lectures for "Object-oriented
Software Engineering" in the 7th Semester at the TFH in
Berlin. Our goal was to take a very simple problem - programming
a calandar, and go through the OOA/OOD steps on it. Then
the groups were to split up and half program the design in
Ada, the other half in C++. No students know either language,
although there is some C and a lot of Pascal knowledge.

We found ourselves involved in a big fight: the students felt
that we were hurting their chances to get a good job by
making half use Ada! They could understand that we wanted to
do an experiment, but they did not want to be guinea pigs. 
"No one uses Ada", "We have no time to learn a new language,
and we already know C", "There are no job offers for Ada programmers,
but lots for C++ programmers", "Ada's not really object-oriented"
"It will take too much time to learn Ada and I have to earn
money at my job", and such were common complaints. We tried
the usual arguments: "It's not the learning of a specific
language that is important, it's the learning of the method",
"There are more and more companies programming in Ada, I
even met someone at the CeBIT who uses Ada", and so on.
 
 After 30 minutes we reached a truce: We will give an
 "advertising lecture" on Ada in two weeks time - and put
 it to a vote. I have the CACM from Nov. 92 (lots of good
 stuff!). So tell me: Why would you want students to learn Ada?
 And would you use it for an OO-project?

 Answers by news or mail to dww@informatik.tfh-berlin.dbp.de

 Thanks


-- 
Debora Weber-Wulff, Professorin fuer Softwaretechnik
snail: Technische Fachhochschule Berlin, FB Informatik, 
       Luxemburgerstr. 10, 1000 Berlin 65
email: dww@informatik.tfh-berlin.dbp.de