Re: Why is Ada a good choice for an ambitious beginner to programming

["David Wright" <davidw@uq.net.au>]

"Bill Findlay" <yaldnifw@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:BA2C190E.15E6%yaldnifw@blueyonder.co.uk...
> On 22/12/02 23:02, in article au5gnq$f3f$1@bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au, "David
> Wright" <davidw@uq.net.au> wrote:
>
> >
> > "Bill Findlay" <yaldnifw@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote >
> >>
> >> Actually, if the interest is in learning to program,
> >> rather than learning to use a specific toolset,
> >> then neither IDEs nor debuggers are necessary,
> >> or even particularly useful to a beginner.
> >>
> >
> > Hi Bill,
> >
> > Of all the extremely useful advice to date (thanks everyone!) this
concise
> > remark reached out and grabbed me by the throat! If by this you are
> > suggesting that 'programming' should mean more than the ability to know
and
> > use the elements of  'a' language and an IDE, but rather should subsume
a
> > thorough understanding the central abstractions or constructs (e.g.,
> > looping, arrays, recursion, pointers etc)
>
> That is the valid subject matter of beginners' programming courses.
>
> > which characterise the various
> > language 'genres' (e.g., logical, imperative, functional, object
oriented
> > etc), then we are very much on the same wave length.
>
> Well, I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm,
> but perhaps you read rather more into my posting than I intended.
>
>

Indeed I did! I think in Lit Theory 101 they call this an instance of the
reader bringing as much (if not more) to the text as the author. My neurons
must have been siezed by a post-modern virus.

Thank you for the lucid clarification, however. It's sometimes a good idea
to think about HOW to approach a domain rather than just focus on the WHAT
that needs to be osmosed.

I also appreciated the remarks about Ada being a supportive language, the
commentry about debugging and the habit of debugging by critically reading
code.

I will pursue the text references.

Thanks again for your thought provoking (to say the least!) post.

David Wright