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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,f25e853f410d55da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Steve Whalen Subject: Re: Time to join the fold? Date: 1999/01/24 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 436285700 Sender: swhalen@netcom8.netcom.com References: <78abg4$cnc$1@its.hooked.net> <36aa3cbe.1120557@news.pacbell.net> Organization: ? Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-01-24T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Tom Moran 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 {===--------------------------------------------------------------===}