Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!husc6!ogccse!blake!uw-beaver!fluke!ssc-vax!shuksan!scott
From: scott@shuksan.UUCP (Scott Moody)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Which language to teach first?
Summary: Industry needs Ada programmers
Message-ID: <1501@shuksan.UUCP>
Date: 14 Aug 89 20:07:47 GMT
References: <2552@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> <6204@hubcap.clemson.edu> <5594@ficc.uu.net>
Organization: The Boeing Co., BAC MMST, Seattle, WA
Lines: 29

In article <5594@ficc.uu.net>, peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:

> What is a beginner in CS101 (or whatever your intro to CS course is called)
> doing any of that for? First you crawl, then you walk, then you run. ADA
> for introductory programming is like Air Jordans for 1-year-olds.

You don't have to run to use Ada (I bike anyway :-)

Remember that the first language you are taught in CS101 is also the 
main language you use throughout undergraduate education (outside of
the many languages course). There are a lot of jobs in industry
that need Ada programmers and it is still the job of the Universites
to teach/prepare its students for the real-world. So what good is
it to teach them pascal if they never use it, other than for the
techniques? Try explaining to you future employer that you were
taught to 'learn' other languages easially when they are looking
for expert Ada programmers. The first thing they do is send
you to an Ada course anyway.

Whether beginners should be taught exceptions as the first thing
is obviously up for discussion, but is probably under the venue of the
instructor who is new to Ada anyway. They should probably teach
the pascal like subset first, then advance to the generics and tasks.
There should be task force on what parts of Ada to teach at what times
but I feel they should concentrate on generics, not as an advanced
feature, but as a necessary and easy one. If all programmers would
think generically then ...

--scott