Re: Ada for 1st year students

[amado.alves@gmail.com]

On 11 Out, 13:54, John McCormick <mccorm...@cs.uni.edu> wrote:
> I'm surprised you find Ada Plus Data Structures too Object-Oriented.
> I feel that the John English book is far more Object-Oriented.

I think first chapters of JE's book are not OO and are fine for me but
I'll check again. I'll check your books too.
I didn't inspect Ada Plus Data Structures rigourously. No time. Too
expensive, and *seemingly* too OO.

Let me clarify that the course is Algoritmia (algorithmics), with
pseudocode for design and analysis and Ada for implementation. The
primary textbook is Cormen et al., with Ziviani (C/Pascal) and a lot
others as secundary bibliography. However this is not engraved in
stone yet. But will have to be soon.

I share your stance on the usual GUIs being too distracting. Note I
require simplicity, even limitedness, to avoid that. Like turtle
graphics. But I want a couple input gadgets. Actually I was thinking
of a fixed panel with a couple buttons, textboxes, and an output
frame, and the studends only change the names of these components, and
the API is totally imperative. Maybe next year... In the meanwhile, I
think I'll go with AdaGIDE and JEWL.

Yes, jGRASP I am thinking to use also (it's great that development has
restarted of this great tool) but maybe only later.

The course programme has a lot of lab work, including two Projects
counting 50% for the grade. However I am trying to do it all in
classes. I don't like to burden the students with home work, or out-of-
classes labwork. There will be some, but very little.

Thank you very much for your extremely valuable information. I'd sure
love to have a look at your materials, but please at your entire
convenience, and just a single example handout or slide is fine.

I need to hang out on GAP more. Probably we'll meet there. I just sent
the fax resubscribing.