Re: ADA made me hate programming

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

On Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:23:37 -0400, mahdert <mahdert@gmail.com> wrote:

> When I first started my undergraduate studies as a computer science
> major, I was forced to use ADA in an introductory course.. Mind you I
> was already familiar with C++ at that time..but after dealing with ADA
> and compilet time errors for about a year, I decided to change my
> major to mech eng..
>
> Now, after many years, I started to revisit ADA and I seem to catch on
> to it.. but I feel (i know) its mostly due to my own experience and
> maturity level..
>
> So, I have to ask your opinion.. DO you think that the push for
> universities to use ADA is a big conspiracy among academicians to kill
> the passion of comp. sci in young students who would like to become
> software engineers???? I do not see any other reason why..
>



-- 


Thank you for your comments.  I found your them very interesting. (and  
thought provoking.)  I was responsible for teaching Ada to beginning  
students over a period of about ten years.  We used R&R Ada for the first  
course and Gnat for later courses.  On the whole, at the end of the first  
course (one semester), the average student was writing correct, 3-400 line  
programs using up to 5 or 6 subprograms.  Almost all of the programs were  
correct the first time they went through the compiler with no errors.

Over the years I have taught the same course in assembler (back in the  
1950s), various versions of Fortran, Cobol, Basic, Pascal, Algol, and  
PL/I.  (As you might have guessed, I was arround for a long time and still  
loved teaching beginners.)  Ada was by far and away the easiest language  
to teach and the students learnt the most.

If Ada was so great, why did the school change to C++?  Student demand.   
All the job openings wanted C++, not Ada.  When all is said and done,  
schools ofter what students want.  (Although one former student did tell  
lme that her employer found it almost impossible to change people who had  
started with C++ into Ada programers.  Rather than insist on Ada  
experience, the employer changed all its programming to C++!  Some days  
you can't win.)

I wish all programming managers would develop your maturity.  God knows,  
we need it.

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