Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!gatech!hubcap!hutch%citron.cs.clemson.edu
From: hutch%citron.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (David Hutchens)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Learning Ada
Message-ID: <6356@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 31 Aug 89 13:50:06 GMT
References: <6354@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Sender: news@hubcap.clemson.edu
Reply-To: hutch%citron.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu
Lines: 31

From article <6354@hubcap.clemson.edu>, by billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe,2847,):
> From article <283@castle.ed.ac.uk>, by db@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry):
>> 
>> What about having the compiler complain about something obscure or advanced
>> that you won't learn about for ages, just because you made a simple
>> mistake in writing your rpogram 
> 
>     Students should have little trouble with this as they write their
>     "rpogram", since Ada has very few reserved words.  It only becomes 
>     a problem in languages like COBOL, whose reserved words number well 
>     over 200... 
> 

Of course there is the classic (from Ada): "Gee I need the cube of X":
	z := x ** 3;
which, of course (:-) generates the message "Ambiguous Expression".

The beginning student might be slightly confused by the reason:
   "The constant 3 is overloaded (as both integer and short integer)
    and there are 2 distinct ** operators, so the compiler doesn't
    know which to pick!"
If there are enough of these, the number of reserved words doesn't
matter as it plays no role in the confusion.

Note:  I'm not sure if there are enough in Ada or not, but reports
from people who have taught it as a first language suggests it works
reasonably well.  Besides there are weird things like this in all
languages.

			David Hutchens
			hutch@hubcap.clemson.edu