Re: Time to join the fold?

[Steve Whalen <swhalen@netcom.com>]

Tom Moran <tmoran@bix.com> wrote:
: >The C programmer will probably have a functioning program
: >before the (frustrated) Ada95 programmer has gotten the first 
: >program to compile.
: As a former, and still occasional, C programmer, I don't find that to
: be the case.  Do you have any data?

I'm not sure I understand the question. I was talking about
experienced programmers, with NO Ada or C experience, using C or Ada
for the first time on a real, non-trivial project.

My "data" is annecdotes from others and my own experience (both as a
programmer and project manager).

Over the years, I've had at least half a dozen competent assembler
programmers work on projects where they had to learn and use C.  They
all got non-trivial programs running in a few days. Most were still
trying to get "sub-systems" debugged a few months later (especially in
the days before our modern debuggers).

I've had a similar number of competent assembler programmers starting
on Pascal or Ada projects who were still bitching about just getting
programs to compile a week or two later.  However, they had rock solid
"sub-systems" a few months later.

Of course the people and problem domains were not as direct a test as
my hypothetical, but assembler (and frequently C) programmers
(including me) don't seem to really think about data structure and its
impact on system structure very deeply until a strongly typed language
starts making them work harder to get the data structures right,
before any serious procedural code is written.

I think the order in which we learn languages IS an important
influence on how we think as programmers and system designers.  I
think whoever said that any programmer who learned Basic early had
their mind turn to mush, and was useless as a programmer after that,
overstated the case, but only by a little bit. To confess my own bias:
the order in which I made serious use of languages (and got paid for
it) was: Assembler to COBOL to Pascal to C to Ada to C++ to Perl
(skipping other lesser known or less used languages like TAL or Mumps
or RPG, etc.).  I've learned something from all the languages, but I
learned most about high quality, reliable programming from the
strongly typed languages (Pascal & Ada in particular).

Steve

-- 
{===--------------------------------------------------------------===}
                Steve Whalen     swhalen@netcom.com
{===--------------------------------------------------------------===}