From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,ea8ea502d35ca2ce X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-05-05 00:41:00 PST Path: newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.ems.psu.edu!news.cis.ohio-state.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsmm00.sul.t-online.com!t-online.de!news.t-online.com!not-for-mail From: gerhard.nospam@bigfoot.de (Gerhard =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=E4ring?=) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Beginner's Language? Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 08:23:10 +0200 Organization: T-Online Message-ID: References: <9cukad$nn68@news-dxb> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: news.t-online.com 989048423 00 12875 D1mvSLJbSBA8-2 010505 07:40:23 X-Complaints-To: abuse@t-online.com X-Sender: 320066699498-0001@t-dialin.net User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.3 (Linux) Xref: newsfeed.google.com comp.lang.ada:7197 Date: 2001-05-05T08:23:10+02:00 List-Id: On Fri, 4 May 2001 20:12:21 +0400, Faisal Halim wrote: >Assalaamu 'alaikum, > >I would like to know if ADA is a good first language for a beginner, >especially when compared to Lisp and Perl, and BASIC. You would not seriously consider Perl or BASIC for teaching the fundamentals of programing, would you? As to my background, I am a a cs student (I try my luck for the second time, first time I was too distracted ...) I think Ada 95 wouldn't be too bad for a first language, but I also think it's not optimal. At my first uni (TU Munich, Germany) they used Gofer (a Haskell dialect) in semester 1, then quickly introduced Java. At the Munich University of Applied Science where I am now, they teach Java from the beginning. I can say that I am not a great friend of making shortcuts in the education of future software engineers. IMHO the people starting with Java from the start (in our current lab project, the profs are using lots of XP techniques) try to introduce too much too fast (OOP from day one, etc.). I think a dynamically typed language is much better suited for a first language (and little-to-medium sized projects, in general), because they provide for much less frustration during learning and for a much more incremental style of programming. You can try out lots of stuff in an interactive interpreter. So, in your position I would look into Python (my favourite) or Scheme. Or perhaps another functional language like Haskell (there is an interpreter called Hugs). If you want to read about Python as a beginners language, you could start at http://www.python.org/cp4e Scheme would have the advantage of some nice development environments well suited for students (DrScheme comes to mind), more widely use in education (MIT, ...). >Despite my 'O' Level qualification in Computers, please assume you are >answering a person totally devoid of computer concepts, as I would find >such replies useful when answering queries from 7th grade students who are >interested in computers and programming, but have no idea of which language >to use. 7th grade? Please don't throw a big language like Ada at them. As I said, dynamically typed languages with an interactive interpreter are IMHO less frustrating. Especially in a course that lasts say 90 minutes, the edit-compile-debug cycle wastes a lot of time. Gerhard -- mail: gerhard bigfoot de registered Linux user #64239 web: http://highqualdev.com public key at homepage public key fingerprint: DEC1 1D02 5743 1159 CD20 A4B6 7B22 6575 86AB 43C0 reduce(lambda x,y:x+y,map(lambda x:chr(ord(x)^42),tuple('zS^BED\nX_FOY\x0b')))