Re: Grabbing Mindshare in the Student Population for Ada

[tatebll@aol.com (Bill Tate)]

Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message news:<3CEB102E.75D7D32@adaworks.com>...
[snip]
> After that class, students began to tell other students
> about how much fun Ada was.   We are ever so
> gradually making progress at increasing mind-share,
> as the caption put it.
> ....
> My class is called, Ada As A Second Language, so the
> students have almost all suffered through the horrors
> of C++ by the time they get to me.    The sign on my
> office door says, "C++ Is Its Own Virus" and few
> of my students disagree with that sentiment.
> ...
> At lunch today, with a group of Marines from one of my other
> classes, and one Marine visitor, the visitor mentioned how
> some project was being converted from Ada to Java.   I said,
> "That's a pretty stupid decision."    He asked, "What would be
> better?"   I replied, "Ada 95."  He said that everything he had
> heard about Ada was pretty negative.    This is an indication
> that there is still a lot of ignorance out there in the decision
> loop.
> 
The posts above make a number of good suggestions but I would strongly
advise backing up even earlier.  I would point to the objectives of
the Python community's CPE (Computer programming for everyone)
initiative.  It seeks to get people exposed to computer programming
well before they reach college.  If Ada is going to achieve "greater"
mindshare (for all the right reasons), it would seem to me that you
have to deal with the difficult problem of overcoming some really bad
software development habits learned by programmers very early on,
e.g., pre-college.

Ada strongly encourages greater discipline in the "engineering" of
software; not the kind of attitude typically exhibited by those of the
"hacker" and "design-by-keyboard" persuasion (to my great
disappointment - I include no small number of CS graduates in this
crowd).  Mix that with a seemingly endless supply of individuals who
believe themselves to possess "god-like" abilities when it comes to
their software development prowess and everything points to the need
for early intervention.  Of course, there is the "cold turkey"
approach of throwing 100K SLOC of C++ code in front of potential
adopters and telling them to "maintain it." :>)