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From: Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: [Ada] made me hate programming
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:05:50 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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Gautier write-only expounded in news:98aa58b3-50fc-418d-9f72-
524b5a23c89d@t10g2000yqg.googlegroups.com:

> On 30 Jun., 07:23, mahdert <mahd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> When I first started my undergraduate studies as a computer science
>> major, I was forced to use ADA in an introductory course.. Mind you I
>> was already familiar with C++ at that time..but after dealing with ADA
>> and compilet time errors for about a year, I decided to change my
>> major to mech eng..
..
> If you had compile-time errors with Ada, it was because you had bugs
> and bugs tend to be detected more at compile-time with Ada. As a
> reward, your programs tend to function earlier correctly once they are
> compiled. Kind of each time you lose 10 minutes fighting with the
> compiler, you gain 1 hour not fighting with the debugger. A good deal
> in the end, but as you say later, it requires some maturity to catch
> it.

I remember this when I was young. For some reason, students 
get real hung up on compile time errors.  It's like they are
horses bouncing around inside the gate, waiting for the door
to open. 

They barely even read the error messages and simply 
take in the one fact "error in line x". Not which kind of 
error or any level of detail. They simply want to know the
quick answer for "getting past the error".  They don't want
to know why it is an error, so long as they can "fix it",
and fix it now ("my assignment is due"). In otherwords,
the compiler is holding them back.

This rush to successfully compile has probably discouraged
many people. Yet as point out above, this is good in that
it saves you much debugging, which is usually much more 
difficult.

Is the problem that debugging is more fun than fixing compile
time errors? There must be phsycological reasons.

Maybe students of Ada are best served by educating them on
this issue before they get too involved in using the compiler.  
To read the error(s) carefully and to understand the nature
of the problems being exposed.  It's like teaching unix
students how to read "man pages" and how to read between
the lines (as it was often necessary to do). 

Then perhaps they won't bounce around in the gate so much 
if they are taught to be more patient. Education might 
avoid the frantic "what do I need to change to
make the compiler like my code" frenzy.  

The compiler is your friend- only except when it 
presents a 'bug box'. ;-)

Warren