From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,808505c9db7d5613 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Looking for good Ada95 book Date: 1996/11/02 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 194090006 references: <32723F6A.54A3@dtek.chalmers.se> <32750568.123@essi.fr> <01bbc5d8$a3b24e00$6a9148a6@cornerstone.mydomain.org> <55955a$n04@felix.seas.gwu.edu> organization: New York University newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-11-02T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Mike said 'Your characterization of the books is correct, Robert, though I think it's going too far to describe the lexical style as "horrible." It does what it is intended to do. " No, I stick by my characterization of horrible. It means that you are teaching students to use a style which is not the standard style that we want to encourage for Ada use. People tend to stick with the style they first learn, so this kind of nonstandard choice causes problems later on. The result in my class is that some people use the Feldman style and some use the more standard style that I (and most other Ada programmers) use. I understand, but find unconvincing, Mike's arguments for this nonstandard style (in which keywords are capitalized). Obviously tastes vary, but for me this disadvantage is sufficient to look at competitive text books that follow a more standard style. This is obviously a question on which opinions will differ, but for me variation in lexical style is very annoying, and it is a great advantage if a language has a pretty standard style, either enforced by the language (COBOL), or by generally accepted convention (C). In the case of Ada, the original RM encouraged an ALL_CAPS style for identifiers that many adopted, but many found intolerable because they FELT IT WAS LIKE SHOUTING! Consequently we had a big mixture of clashing styles, even sometimes I saw employees plain refuse to follow company standards. With Ada 95, we have something approaching a real consensus on style (use lower case for keywords and Capitalized_Identifiers_With_Underscores). I think this consensus is valuable for the community, and I think it is damaging for a text book in effect to wage a rear guard action against this consensus. Mike feels that UPPER case keywords are superior from a pedagogical point of view. Even if this were true (I don't accept this), it is not enough to make it acceptable to undermine consensus style issues. Certainly I don't see people seriously arguing this as an issue in teaching C (though of cours there are many other legitimate issues when it comes to teaching C as a first language). SO, horrible may be too far for Mike, but I stand by it!