Re: Looking for a good Ada 95 book

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Mike says

"I always tell students they are welcome to develop their own styles,
as long as they are consistent. Naturally, most of the real beginners
imitate the style they see, then in later courses they start feeling
their oats and develop their own. There's lots more variety in my
CS2 class; that's exactly as it should be."

Ah! There is the fundamental difference. I strongly disagree with this.
Students should NOT be encouraged to think that figuring out your own
style is a normal and reasonable activity, on the contrary, they should
learn that in the real world, an external style is imposed and you
have to follow it. Encouraging this kind of individuality to me is
inconsistent with good engineering practice. It would be like telling
chemistry students in the lab to develop their own distinctive styles
of doing experiments.

So, it is not surprising that Mike doesn't see this as a big deal. He
notes that people tend to copy what they see at first, and this is why
I would like them to see something more standard.

By the way, I agree with others who like the *content* of Mike's book, but
there are some other very good books appearing, and, as I said earlier,
other things being equal, I would choose a book using standard style.
Perhaps I won't find one, perhaps I will!