Re: Suggestions for topics in an Ada course?

[wilson <leon.winslow@notes.udayton.edu>]

I have to go along with Steve (the Duck) about the difficulties of  
teaching Ada to people with a strong C family background.  My experience  
is that their understanding of such fundamental terms such as classes,  
procedures, functions, etc. is quite different from the use of those terms  
in Ada.  I know at least one company gave up trying to switch C family  
programers to Ada because the programmers never really understood what  
they were doing.

That first language, as someone commented earlier, sets up all kinds of  
pathways (ruts?) in the brain that are very hard to modify.

This is not to discourage you from trying.  God knows we need more people  
like you.  It is just a note about possible difficulties along the way.

Lee




On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 19:59:48 -0500, Steve <nospam_steved94@comcast.net>  
wrote:

> "Peter C. Chapin" <pchapin@sover.net> wrote in message
> news:4737291e$0$27064$4d3efbfe@news.sover.net...
> [snip]
>> course? I would like to talk about something that shows the language in
>> a good light as well as captures student interest. Some kind of
>
> An area that might capture students' interest is tasking.  Since the  
> current
> trend is toward multi-core processors and Ada has tasking built into the
> language, it's a natural fit.
>
> I'm not in academics, but one thing that I find that people with a
> C/C++/Java background have a hard time understanding is strong typing.   
> They
> "think" that C++ has strong typing, teach them what strong typing really  
> is.
>
> Regards,
> Steve
> (The Duck)
>
>> introduction to a GUI library or network library might be good (the
>> students have never done any GUI or network programming before). Also
>> because I teach in a computer engineering curriculum, low level device
>> control applications would be reasonable and appropriate as well.
>>
>> Anyway, I'm sure I can put something together. However, I thought I
>> would ask here to see if anyone has some suggestions for libraries,
>> tools, etc, that I might look at as I prepare materials for next  
>> semester.
>>
>> In case it matters, I'll be using the GNAT compiler.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Peter
>
>



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