Re: Why don't large companies use Ada?

From: <mat_at_mole-end.matawan.nj.us>
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 1994 03:03:24 GMT
Message-ID: <1994Nov23.030324.7223_at_mole-end.matawan.nj.us>


In article <3ae5n0$o0e_at_gnat.cs.nyu.edu>, dewar_at_cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> Why do universities teach Ada?
 

> It is a shame to see people use this decrepit line of reasoning to justify
> teaching C in beginning courses. ...

As I recall, we differed on this point once before, many years ago, you and I. I've changed my opinion somewhat.

It's a shame that we teach people a programming language before we teach them how to think about problems.

I remember my undergrad engineering education. I spent two years on basic math and science and then on basic electrical theory (circuit theory) before I was taught any electronics. And _then_ I was allowed to work in the lab, closely supervised for the first few weeks to make sure I didn't destroy anything.

Maybe we should see how this experience can be projected into software. It's not the academics that took the first step towards making software an engineering discipline, and heaven knows it wasn't the engineers. It was the business programmers and people working for them (Constantine, Jackson, et. al.)

BTW, the most valuable single course I ever took was one that Jack Schwartz of NYU gave on proving programs. The most harmful single course I ever took was fundamental algorithms--because the `fundamental' things include bags of ad-hoc tricks, especially for searching and sorting.

But I've said that before.

The best thing I can say about Ada for the purpose espoused is that it is infinitely better than Pascal, lacking as it does the idiot mistakes that were written into Pascal. The worst thing (for teaching the beginning programmer) is that it requires its own bag of tricks to deal with some of the peculiarities of declaring variables.

And the thing I least like about it is its excessive wordiness ;^)

I do prefer C++.

-- 
 (This man's opinions are his own.)
 From mole-end				Mark Terribile
 mat_at_mole-end.matawan.nj.us, Somewhere in Matawan, NJ
	(Training and consulting in C, C++, UNIX, etc.)
Received on Wed Nov 23 1994 - 04:03:24 CET

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