is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

I made a survey of text books today at my university book store,
and I could not find a single book on Ada (nor on Fortran for that matter).

I remember many years ago that I saw one textbook that was in Ada for
a course in computer science area.

These are the computer languages books I've seen (all textbooks for
courses)

1) C/C++:
C FOR SCIENTISTS+ENGINEERS, ABSOLUTE C++, EBK ABSOLUTE C++,
DATA STRUCTURES+ALG.ANAL.IN C++

2) Perl: ELEMENTS OF PROGRAMMING WITH PERL

3) Matlab: few, here is one ENGINEERING COMPUTATION WITH MATLAB,

4) Python: PYTHON PROGRAMMING

I did not see a Java one at this school at this time, but I have seen
textbooks on Java before.

if students do not learn Ada at school, there is less chance
they will use.

It looks like C/C++ is still popular for teaching, I find this amazing :)

--Nasser

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Peter C. Chapin]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2011, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:

> I made a survey of text books today at my university book store, and I 
> could not find a single book on Ada (nor on Fortran for that matter).

At Vermont Technical College Ada is not officially covered in any of our 
standard courses. However, I have presented it as an auxiliary topic in a 
few courses. One year, for example, I taught a special topics course in 
which the students built a weather station as a group project using Ada. I'm 
not the only faculty member who uses Ada in the classroom. We have an 
adjunct who uses the language in his business (he sees it as a competitive 
advantage) and also presents it in the courses he teaches when he can.

We have also made significant use of the Ada and SPARK in some special 
projects. Those projects have involved a number of students over the last 
few years but the projects are not a direct part of the curriculum.

Last year one of those students applied for a job at a shop where Ada was 
being used. The employer was interested in (and I think a little surprised 
by) the fact that he knew Ada but the position they were looking to fill did 
not require language. In the end he didn't get the job.

Another student told me that during an interview she proudly told the 
interviewer that she knew Ada (it had become her favorite language). 
Apparently he said, "Ada? Does anybody still use that?" So I guess it wasn't 
seen as an advantage in that situation. Alas.

> It looks like C/C++ is still popular for teaching, I find this amazing :)

We do a lot with C and C++ in our computer engineering technology program. 
C is so dominant in the world of embedded systems, device drivers, etc, that 
it would be negligent not to cover it.

Peter

P.S. The adjunct I mentioned earlier is a former VTC student who was first 
exposed to Ada in one of my classes.

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[John McCormick]

On Mar 11, 8:33 pm, "Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> wrote:
> I made a survey of text books today at my university book store,
> and I could not find a single book on Ada (nor on Fortran for that matter).
>
> --Nasser

Ada is still being used for teaching.  A couple of pieces of
evidence:  There are around 120 schools participating in the GAP (GNAT
Academic Program) sponsored by AdaCore.  In 2010 I had a banner year
in sales of my two Freshman level Ada textbooks (Intro to Programming
and Data Structures).  You won't find any Ada textbooks at college
book stores where it is not required for a particular course.
Currently C++, Java, and increasingly Python are the major languages
used in Freshman courses.  I'm finding students in my upper level
courses who started out in Python haven't a clue about arrays.
Another classic "low level" language feature bites the dust replaced
by dynamic data structures from massive libraries.

I have just returned from the ACM SIGCSE (Special Interest Group for
Computer Science Education) where SIGAda has a booth in the exhibit
hall.  Amazing how many people stop by to say how they would love to
teach Ada to beginners but that the students would revolt if they did
not teach one of the popular three languages.  I think we are the only
discipline in which the content of Freahman courses is determined by
the "want ads".

John


John

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 3/13/2011 6:22 AM, John McCormick wrote:
> On Mar 11, 8:33 pm, "Nasser M. Abbasi"<n...@12000.org>  wrote:
>> I made a survey of text books today at my university book store,
>> and I could not find a single book on Ada (nor on Fortran for that matter).
>>
>> --Nasser
>

> Ada is still being used for teaching.

That is good to know.

...
> Currently C++, Java, and increasingly Python are the major languages
> used in Freshman courses.

Yes, and Matlab for Engineering and many math departments as well.

> I'm finding students in my upper level
> courses who started out in Python haven't a clue about arrays.
> Another classic "low level" language feature bites the dust replaced
> by dynamic data structures from massive libraries.
>

Sure. Ask one of those students to code a linked list or a queue
from scratch for example, and they will look funny at you ;).

Everything is an object or a container these days. The old skills
of learning how to implement classical data structures from
scratch (linked list, queues, hash tables, binary tress, DAG's
etc...) are now replaced by just learning new API's of reusable
libraries.

It is a matter of finding the correct class or package and using it.
That is all what is needed. No need to know how it works from inside.
One can't really fight this trend, it is the new way of doing things.

> I have just returned from the ACM SIGCSE (Special Interest Group for
> Computer Science Education) where SIGAda has a booth in the exhibit
> hall.  Amazing how many people stop by to say how they would love to
> teach Ada to beginners but that the students would revolt if they did
> not teach one of the popular three languages.  I think we are the only
> discipline in which the content of Freahman courses is determined by
> the "want ads".
>
> John

Yes, schools teach what industry asks for. If industry starts
asking for graduates with Ada skills, then schools will start
teaching that.

--Nasser

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Hyman Rosen]

On 3/13/2011 9:40 AM, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> It is a matter of finding the correct class or package and using it.
> That is all what is needed. No need to know how it works from inside.
> One can't really fight this trend, it is the new way of doing things.

Of course, this is not a new trend. People who need mathematical
functions do not write their own cosine routine, or even their
own Bessel function routine. They don't write their own linear
algebra packages. Schoolchildren are no longer taught how to
extract square roots using pencil and paper. Because programming
is now taught differently from the way you learned it does not
make the new way bad.

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Lucretia]

> Yes, schools teach what industry asks for. If industry starts
> asking for graduates with Ada skills, then schools will start
> teaching that.

Seems there is one group saying nobody teaches it so we're moving to C
and/or C++ and the other group group saying that nobody asks for it,
so it's taught. You should teach it anyway. Our university taught it
over C/C++ (back in 95), unfortunately, they moved to Java because it
was the next big thing (lots of hype), I heard that they later
regretted it.

AFAIK, York still teaches it, because Alan Burns teaches there.

Luke.

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Pascal Obry]

Luke,

> AFAIK, York still teaches it, because Alan Burns teaches there.

Note only this university, but lot of others. See for example all the 
GAP members using GNAT GPL:

    http://www.adacore.com/home/academia/members/

And this does not count university not using GNAT or not registered.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|    http://www.obry.net  -  http://v2p.fr.eu.org
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
--|
--| gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key F949BD3B

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Florian Weimer]

* Pascal Obry:

>> AFAIK, York still teaches it, because Alan Burns teaches there.
>
> Note only this university, but lot of others. See for example all the
> GAP members using GNAT GPL:
>
>    http://www.adacore.com/home/academia/members/

That's not necessarily indicative of teaching.  In Germany, there is
quite a bit of software development going on in universities, using
students as unpaid labor and who are forced to assign copyright to a
spin-off as a prerequisite for obtaining a degree.

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:16:42 +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:

> That's not necessarily indicative of teaching.  In Germany, there is
> quite a bit of software development going on in universities, using
> students as unpaid labor and who are forced to assign copyright to a
> spin-off as a prerequisite for obtaining a degree.

True, but I am uncertain what is better to Ada, being taught to many
students or being used by a lesser number but for some practical work.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:58:01 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
> True, but I am uncertain what is better to Ada, being taught to many
> students or being used by a lesser number but for some practical work.
Depends on what will go in the future: will they become decisioners ? Will  
they keep some good memories from what they learned about Ada ?


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.
“ c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */ ” [Anonymous]

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 01:17:31 +0200, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Le Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:58:01 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
> <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a �crit:
>> True, but I am uncertain what is better to Ada, being taught to many
>> students or being used by a lesser number but for some practical work.
> Depends on what will go in the future: will they become decisioners ? Will  
> they keep some good memories from what they learned about Ada ?

No, I mean that things being taught are often ignored or hated by students.
Practical work leaves a deeper imprint. In general I am a bit sceptical
about teaching programming languages. Programming is not a science and
languages are even less than science. They'd better learn fundamental
things, e.g. math.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 28 Mar 2011 10:26:02 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
> No, I mean that things being taught are often ignored or hated by  
> students.
Ouch, that's so bad ? :(

> Practical work leaves a deeper imprint. In general I am a bit sceptical
> about teaching programming languages. Programming is not a science and
> languages are even less than science.
True for Ada, which was designed with practical purpose in mind, but just  
less true some other languages (not the topic here anyway). Yes, Ada is  
not formal in the mathematical sense.



-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.
“ c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */ ” [Anonymous]

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:25:30 +0200, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Le Mon, 28 Mar 2011 10:26:02 +0200, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
> <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a �crit:
>> No, I mean that things being taught are often ignored or hated by  
>> students.
> Ouch, that's so bad ? :(

Or maybe worse?

>> Practical work leaves a deeper imprint. In general I am a bit sceptical
>> about teaching programming languages. Programming is not a science and
>> languages are even less than science.
> True for Ada, which was designed with practical purpose in mind, but just  
> less true some other languages (not the topic here anyway).

Even more true for those.

> Yes, Ada is not formal in the mathematical sense.

A programming language must be formal in terms of the science of
programming, which does not exist. The languages you probably have in mind
are as formal as numerology is. It is modern times scholastics.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 28.03.11 14:19, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:25:30 +0200, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:

>> Yes, Ada is not formal in the mathematical sense.

(Mathematics, like Ada, is not formal in the mathematical sense.
That's not a hindrance, though, to either practising  mathematics
or to teaching it.)

> A programming language must be formal in terms of the science of
> programming, which does not exist.

Trying to strive for the science of programming is possible. Doing so,
then, there is even more reason to try teaching the parts of programming
that would be considered essential, after finding these parts in a
scientific way.

What are the essential parts of programming, and how to find them,
scientifically?

Begin science by observation. Evaluation of programming can find
parts that programmers have been using productively for many years.
For example, one might find procedures for measuring the effectiveness
of certain ways to define a module's (type's) interface, given a
programming situation (to be defined in a minute).

Compare programming situations by varying the parameters of these
"situational experiments".  Declare that effectiveness means that
the outcome is technically working and is understandable by
most humans concerned, now, in the history, and in the future, without
too much effort.

Continuing the module example with further definitions, a programming
situation consists of (a) human programmers and (b) a problem to be
solved.  A module can be defined in terms of data, subroutines,
and visibility.  Then, which module is effective, technically?
And on the human side of the situation, given a PL, how does
the module's definition using the PL influence the complexity
of understanding it (the human side of modules) when compared to
doing the same using another PL?

The latter question assumes the importance of understanding
which I find plausible when trying to turn to the science of
programming.  (Assuming that efficiency, not mere functioning,
is what motivates the subjects of the experiment, too.)

Include reasoning from the psychology of thought.
(By which I mean down-to-earth topics, such as
- human pattern matching as part of the process of human understanding,
our perception matching patterns that move ("operational") or that
stand still ("denotational")
- reading comprehension, including overload resolution of program text
- ...)

Evaluating the different outcomes of programming situations,
one might then arrive at a suggestion, namely to pick parts of
programming for teaching (or language design)  that are both ubiquitous
and that have a justifiable learning curve.  Found by scientific
investigation.  "Ubiquitous parts of programming" should not mean
that everyone uses X all the time; frequency of X alone could be a
consequence of a flaw in language design (thinking of C's int).
This can be checked by the scientific method of comparing.
Justification of the learning curve must include comparison with
other solutions (e.g. other languages), too.

Drawing upon programming literature for scientific evaluation
the subject "Best Practice" is a source of information about
possible choices of what is essential in programming.
Essentials define a goal and following it we are led to the human
prerequisites of ever arriving at or near it.  These would be the
facts that one must know, the skills that one must acquire, in order
to approach the essentials of programming.  Like: procedure call,
modular arithmetic, objects in memory, ...

Experiment:  Leave out a fact or a skill and observe the programming
situation. The experiment can be performed as a retrospect, or by
comparing languages that do or do not have the "fact" (hence require
no knowledge of it).

Eventually, the result of observation and reasoning will be a formalism
of just the features of programming languages that are  considered
essential.
The formalism is not just technical, it refers to programming
situations as well.

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Tue, 15 Mar 2011 18:21:58 +0100, Pascal Obry <pascal@obry.net> a écrit:
> Note only this university, but lot of others. See for example all the  
> GAP members using GNAT GPL:
>
>     http://www.adacore.com/home/academia/members/
>
> And this does not count university not using GNAT or not registered.
Yes indeed, not all registered. At least the town where I live, Metz  
(france), learn Ada at an IUT, and is not part of the above list. However,  
the course content below, show they do learn it:
http://www.iut.univ-metz.fr/formations/dut-en-annee-speciale/informatique-info-annee-speciale/article/programme-des-enseignements-418
Three years go, I was looking at some printed books about the Ada 2005  
reference. At a library, the bookseller could not gave me what I wanted,  
but still confessed me just a few days before, he get a similar request  
 from a student in that same town.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.
“ c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */ ” [Anonymous]

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[richard]

On Mar 15, 9:21 am, Pascal Obry <pas...@obry.net> wrote:
> Luke,
>
> > AFAIK, York still teaches it, because Alan Burns teaches there.
>
> Note only this university, but lot of others. See for example all the
> GAP members using GNAT GPL:
>
>    http://www.adacore.com/home/academia/members/
>
> And this does not count university not using GNAT or not registered.
>
> Pascal.
>
> --
>
> --|------------------------------------------------------
> --| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
> --| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
> --|------------------------------------------------------
> --|    http://www.obry.net -  http://v2p.fr.eu.org
> --| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
> --|
> --| gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key F949BD3B

We are a GAP member with a couple PhD students using Ada, and maybe
two faculty members.
However , Ada, once required of students is no longer used I. The
curriculum.
Our Computer Science faculty is largely hostile toward Ada.  People
read the
memorandum from Mr. Page (1996) as meaning that the DoD abandoned Ada,
and that view has persisted.  The prevailing view among the faculty is
that
Ada is no longer relevant for real projects. This is not likely to
change.
Nothing significant has occurred to alter that perception.  As the
lone
member of the faculty to still tout the benefits of Ada, I am regarded
as something of a throwback to an earlier time, humored and tolerated,
but
not taken seriously in my advocacy of Ada.

I continue to update my book, Ada Distilled, and release it free for
anyone
Who wants to use it.  That is as close as I get to teaching the
language
these days.

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[stefan-lucks]

At our place, Ada is tought in the context of a required elective course 
on safe and secure systems, which most of our master students take. 

On Mon, 28 Mar 2011, richard wrote:

> However , Ada, once required of students is no longer used I. [...] Our 
> Computer Science faculty is largely hostile toward Ada. [...]
> 
> I continue to update my book, Ada Distilled, and release it free for 
> anyone Who wants to use it.  That is as close as I get to teaching the 
> language these days.

I like your book, and I recommend it to students. Thank you for that 
contribution!


-- 
------ Stefan Lucks   --  Bauhaus-University Weimar  --   Germany  ------
               Stefan dot Lucks at uni minus weimar dot de
------  I  love  the  taste  of  Cryptanalysis  in  the  morning!  ------

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 13.03.11 14:22, John McCormick wrote:

> I have just returned from the ACM SIGCSE (Special Interest Group for
> Computer Science Education) where SIGAda has a booth in the exhibit
> hall.  Amazing how many people stop by to say how they would love to
> teach Ada to beginners but that the students would revolt if they did
> not teach one of the popular three languages.  I think we are the only
> discipline in which the content of Freahman courses is determined by
> the "want ads".

All the more spin doctoring seems needed.  I would hope that Brinch
Hansen effects can be avoided by being constructive.

Isn't there a way to frame ``operational programming'' such that it is
appealing to at least some mathnic and engineering groups?  (Showing
how to actually program and reason in real TIME and real SPACE.)

One idea is to remove the language name dressing from the ads
and reduce them to their popular content.  Such as (preparatory
work for) O-O Programming, functional style, the Map-Reduce Model
in concurrent programming languages, efficient banking (perhaps
Duncan Sands can explain?) etc.

Re: is Ada still being used for teaching at universities?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:18:00 +0100, Georg Bauhaus  
<rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> a écrit:
> I would hope that Brinch Hansen effects can be avoided by being  
> constructive.
What is Brinch Hansen Effects please ?

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.
“ c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */ ” [Anonymous]