From: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)
Subject: Ada as a First Language
Organization: George Washington University
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 00:08:18 GMT

In article <1992Dec21.125611.20372@vitro.com> mzwick@vitro.com (Morris J. Zwick) writes:
>In article <1992Dec18.181158.28683@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com
>(fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>>
>>I think students would be best served by using something INTENDED for
>>teaching, which is relatively safe and small.  That pretty much means
>>Pascal.  Some schools have had good luck with LISP/SCHEME style
>>languages, but I'm not sure how easy they are to deal with as first
>>languages, either.
>>
>
>AMEN!!
>
Not sure whether you were saying Amen to avoiding LISP/Scheme as a
first language, or Ada as a first language. I can't speak for the former 
and wouldn't presume to, as I have neither learned nor taught LISP or
Scheme as a first language. I and many others have taught Ada as a
first language and we see little wrong with it in that context, and
a whole lot right. Ada is as easy as Pascal if taught by people who
trouble themselves to know what they are doing, using one of the
eight recently published texts written for the purpose. And it gives
the student something to grow into. 

Somehow we are willing to teach "big" natural languages (English, for
example), to babies. What is the problem people have with teaching
"big" computer languages (Turbo Pascal, C++, Ada) to beginning
programmers. Babies assimilate natural language, and students
assimilate programming language, in ever-increasing subsets.

At the risk of offending, let me state that I think people who don't
teach much (or at all), and have spent a number of years since their
first college programming course (or never had one), are not in a
good position to tell us what or how to teach. You should be quite
happy that we are teaching an industrial-strength language, right 
from the start, so that our students don't see SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
as a "special topic" but rather assimilate it as simply the natural
way to develop programs.

Have you spoken recently to any student who learned Ada as a first language?

Have you looked at any of the texts published in the last 3-4 years,
targeted to first-year students learning Ada as their first language?

Your comments would certainly be more credible if you supplied a bit of
information as to how your recent experience qualifies you to make
pronouncements of this kind. (I won't bore the net with mine, but
you are welcome to them by e-mail if you wish.)

I can send by e-mail a list of schools where Ada is the first language,
and of texts targeted to that audience. If you are interested.

I apologize to my net friends for this immodesty, but I get kinda
tired of being told how and what to teach by people who have never tried it.

Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman
co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee

Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
(202) 994-5253 (voice)
(202) 994-5296 (fax)
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)

"Americans want the fruits of patience -- and they want them now."
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada