Re: Ada in teaching (was: Ariane 5 Failure from 1996)

["John B. Matthews" <nospam@nospam.invalid>]

In article <4a5ce82c$0$32682$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net>,
 Georg Bauhaus <rm.tsoh.plus-bug.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de> wrote:

> John B. Matthews wrote:
> 
> > I always though going from Pascal to Ada would have been easier.
> 
> Which subset of Ada?

Why, the Pascal subset, of course! :-)

> Without exceptionally good explanations, I can't imagine full 
> Ada, with access discriminants, say, as a possible teaching 
> vehicle at all.

Why use a subset at all? Surely the novice can write useful 
programs that use a library, even if that library depends on access 
discriminants for it's implementation. Using access discriminants 
for one's own self-referential data structures and iterators can be 
deferred to a second level course.

> Java is probably thought to be closer to business;
> at least I've heard teachers say so. It is,
> in another sense, at least: sloppy base type systems
> and hand made concurrency are a good basis for
> continued support business.  While Java's int, long, etc. only
> require a little hubris to handle them properly, there are the
> ubiquituous features of the same spirit, equally successful:
> int, long, etc. in C and their integer overflows and buffer
> overflows.
> These will provide for vulnerability protection opportunities
> and help establish international software companies :-)
> Java has learned from this base type system, so it
> moved the imperfections to object spaghetti. No?

In version 1.5, Java added a generic form of compile-time type 
checking [1] and task oriented support for concurrent programming 
[2]. These are a significant improvement, but they are optional; 
with Ada, the features are "baked-in," so to speak. Java has always 
supported interface inheritance from a single Object; IIUC, the 
present Ada standard offers a similar approach [3].

> You should be teaching what everyone wants.
> You should be teaching what everyone teaches.
> You should be rushing towards a new paradigm
> in teaching as soon as it is there.
> Be part of the crowd. It's only tax payers' money.

I'm sorry, I cannot support your candidacy for public office. :-)

[1]<http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/>
[2]<http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/
package-summary.html>
[3]<http://www.adaic.com/standards/05rat/html/Rat-2-4.html>

-- 
John B. Matthews
trashgod at gmail dot com
<http://home.roadrunner.com/~jbmatthews/>