Re: Ada for 1st year students

["Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.acm.org>]

Georg Bauhaus wrote:
> Of course, Windows PC OS is the culprit, extending its technical
> lead into Ada programming tools! Let's see what an "It Just Works"
> Scottish computer has to say:

Ada allows such identifiers, but that doesn't mean they're accepted by the OS or 
tools that run on it. One could argue that, once again, Ada is ahead of its time.

Just because Ada allows such identifiers doesn't mean one should use them. 
Certainly if they prevent the compilation of the unit and one cannot find an OS 
and tools that change that, one should not use them.

I would argue that one should not use such identifiers, even if the the 
language, tools, and OS work perfectly with them. Ada reserved words (with the 
lamentable exception of "elsif") are English words, and the intention is that, 
with properly chosen identifiers, Ada source code reads (sorta/kinda) like 
English text, which can be a big help in understanding the code. Using 
non-English identifiers negates this, and therefore should be avoided.

if Chooidooigoo then

is gobbledygook whether you speak both languages or not.

I'd suggest creating Portu-Ada, which uses Portuguese equivalents of the 
reserved words. A preprocessor translates the reserved words into English, and 
mangles identifiers to eliminate characters that interfere with compilation. The 
resulting generated Ada is not intended for human consumption, and is discarded 
once it is no longer needed. This should make programming more accessible to 
Portuguese beginning students than using straight Ada with its English reserved 
words.

Writing the preprocessor in Portu-Ada might be a suitable project for the 
students, and would help expose them to straight Ada (and the limitations of the 
tools and OS).

Just Rumpelstiltskin's 2 cent's worth.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"People called Romanes, they go the house?"
Monty Python's Life of Brian
79