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From: Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada Advocacy.
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 10:39:11 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: Norwegian university of science and technology
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Luke A. Guest wrote:
> Ok, fair enough, but why would so many courses create their own child
> packages for I/O? Does it not support printing of different types as
> standard?

I don't know. Perhaps it is the way they want to teach Ada?

But that you claim Hello world in Ada is so difficult I cannot
understand at all. Please compare:

   with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO;

   procedure Hello is
   begin
      Put_Line ("Hello World!");
   end Hello;

to the C++ version

   #include <iostream>

   int main()
   {
       std::cout << "Hello, world!\n";
   }

Which is more complicated to understand, remember and read for a
complete beginner in programming?

Trying to imagine the questions from a beginner I would think the
following would come up:

   Ada version:

      1. What does with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO; mean

   C++ version:

      1. What does #include <iostream> mean?
      2. What is int main() ?
      3. What is std::cout ?
      4. Why is there << in front of "Hello world" ?
      5. What does \n mean?

The reason I don't think there are more questions to the Ada version is
that it reads well and the beginner probably can relate to what
procedure mean as one have procedures for doing things in other
situations. I also think that Put_Line ("") is understood without
difficulty. Note I'm talking about a person who has not opened a single
computer programming book or have any other knowledge. 

I think I'll try to send these two examples to some people I know that
know nothing of programming and have then try to explain what the
program does for me :-)


Preben
-- 
�I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet.
 So who am I to judge.�
                 - The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radioplay)