Re: Ada for 1st year students

[Michael Feldman <mfeldman@gwu.edu>]

amado.alves@gmail.com wrote:

Regarding Ada for *first-year students*.

I taught first- and second-year university courses for over 30 years, 
before retiring in 2006. From 1982 to 2002, Ada was the language of our 
2nd-level or CS2 (data structures and algorithms) course. In 1992, we 
switched the first or CS1 course from Pascal to Ada.

Through all these years, the one thing the students had in common was 
that *some* of them had prior programming experience (in secondary 
school), but *most* (well over 50%) had none at all.

> (1) Textbooks. In Portuguese (Brazilian translation fine) or English.
Must be introductory, i.e. for students sans prior knowledge of
programming in any language. Should be small or cheap (or both). The
vendor should be prompt.

Believe it or not, there exists a (Brazilian) Portuguese-language one, 
for which I wrote a brief review a while back:

Introdu��o � Programa��o com Ada 95 (in Portuguese)
(Introduction to Programming with Ada 95)
Arthur Vargas Lopes
Editora da Ulbra, 1997 (ISBN 85-85692-38-3)

This 400-page book is a very nice, if relatively brief, introduction to 
most of Ada 95, suitable for Portuguese-speaking students at first 
level. The examples are complete and compilable, moving from the very 
simple to more interesting ones using packages,  tagged types, and tasks 
(the last a subject in which the author is especially interested). 
Included with the book is a set of diskettes containing the book 
examples and a copy of AVLAda95, the author's Windows 95/98/NT student 
development environment. While some English-language Ada texts have been 
translated into other languages, this is one of the few original texts 
not written in English, and one of the very few such books intended for 
first-year students. The author is using it in Brazil, and it ought to 
be useful for other Ada-related courses in Brazil and Portugal. It can 
serve as a good example to encourage others to write non-English Ada 
textbooks. (M.B.F.)

I don't know whether it's still in print, but it's worth checking out. I 
did find a Brazilian listing for it at

http://www.traca.com.br/?mod=LV82359&origem=resultadodetalhada

The author got his Ph.D. from the university I taught in, and I was on 
his doctoral committee, so I knew him pretty well at the time. If you 
can't find the book, let me know and I'll try to put you in touch with 
him. I think he may be living here in the US now.

 > (2) Compilers. Must be free (as in free beer) or very low cost 
(perhaps an educational license) and install out-of-the box on Windows 
or Linux (or both, preferably). Must support Latin-1, preferably 
Unicode. The vendor should be prompt.

GNAT is definitely the way to go. https://libre.adacore.com/

 > (3) IDE or text editor. Same requirements as above.

Let's summarize the pro's and con's of IDE's for *beginners*.

AdaGIDE is student-oriented but Windows-only, and designed to handle 
only Ada programs.

GPS is multiplatform (Windows and Linux) but a bit overcomplicated for 
beginners. I haven't tried using it for other languages.

My favorite student IDE hasn't been mentioned here: jGRASP. It's been 
developed and refined over a number of years by James Cross' (pretty 
well-funded) group at Auburn University (in Alabama).

jGRASP exists - and is actively developed and supported - for Windows, 
Linux, and Mac OS X, and will handle source files in Ada, C, C++, 
Objective C, Java, and VHDL. Using option screens, you can tailor it to 
use your favorite compiler; GNAT is the default Ada one.

jGRASP will do the usual editor stuff like syntax coloring, but also has 
a bunch of other pedagogical tools (which you can cick on and off), like 
graphically annotating your source file to show the syntax. (This is 
much more interesting to look at than to describe.)

There's no complicated project setup - just tell it where your source 
files are.

jGRASP is not (as far as I know) open-source; I think the group doesn't 
want to lose control of it. It is, however, distributed free - just 
download it from www.jgrasp.org.

I have no connection to the jGRASP project. That said, I've met Jim 
Cross for many years at Ada and SIGCSE conferences, and I like the work 
he and his group have done with this system over the years. Give it a 
try - it's not a big investment to download and install.

Mike Feldman
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC