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,abd120a1d5231d28 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Looking for a good Ada 95 book Date: 1996/11/23 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 198327226 references: <3290C33B.1772@cse.eng.lmu.edu> <56rc87$lbb@felix.seas.gwu.edu> <1996Nov23.082018.1@eisner> organization: New York University newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-11-23T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Larry says "If students do not experiment with styles, they will be ill-prepared to contribute to the style discussion when a group such as that which wrote GNAT chooses a style (as described many bytes ago in this newsgroup)." Well that's like thinking that students who have never been taught about gotos know nothing about gotos! I doubt that requiring a consistent style in the very first course guarantees a set of graduates who will never have an opinion on style! The point is that this early on, it is too early for students to make a considered judgment anyway. After all in a first course, you typically do NOT fully explore the programming language design space, that comes later. You might as well say that they should be able to freely choose the syntax and semantics they use for writing programs in the first course, on the grounds that otherwise they will be ill-equipped to contribute to discussions on language design!