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From: kay@warwick.UUCP (Kay Dekker)
Newsgroups: net.lang.pascal,net.college
Subject: Re: pascal ass intro. language
Message-ID: <433@snow.warwick.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 20:13:52 EST
Article-I.D.: snow.433
Posted: Thu Feb 27 20:13:52 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 19:37:52 EST
References: <192@bu-cs.UUCP> <4253@ut-sally.UUCP>
Reply-To: kay@warwick.UUCP (Kay Dekker)
Organization: Computer Science, Warwick University, UK
Lines: 29
Xref: watmath net.lang.pascal:503 net.college:1172

In article <4253@ut-sally.UUCP> ark@sally.UUCP (Arthur M. Keller) writes:
>I have decided to step into the fray here.

Same here.  Normally, I'd stay away from this sort of discussion as it
invariably becomes "religious", but the following comment made me feel
like doing a little evangelizing...

>I don't know anyone who seriously suggests
>teaching Ada as a first language (they should be punished by having to
>teach Ada to Cobol programmers).

Gag me (as I believe the idiom is) with a spoon!  I don't understand why,
if Pascal could be considered as an introductory language, Ada should be
regarded as worse.  I often hear the complaint "But Ada is so *huge* and
*complicated*!".  Maybe, if you look at the complete language.  However,
there is a subset of Ada which is remarkably Pascal-like: if one ignores
tasking, and the rest of the "further on in the book" stuff, there remains
a simple, elegant, Algol-like language which should be as comprehensible
to a beginning programmer as Pascal is, if not more so.  And it doesn't have
the quirks which make Pascal difficult to explain.
Have you ever tried to explain Pascal I/O to beginners?  I have, and I can't
say it sounds entirely convincing.

But then I *like* Ada.  So you can disregard the above as "religious" if you
want.
							Kay.
-- 
Virtue is its own punishment.
			... mcvax!ukc!warwick!kay