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From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: soc.college,comp.edu
Subject: Re: First Language Taught in CSC degree track
Message-ID: <1265@killer.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Aug-87 02:04:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: killer.1265
Posted: Sat Aug  1 02:04:29 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Aug-87 09:45:36 EDT
References: <455@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Organization: Bayou Telecommunications
Lines: 34
Xref: mnetor soc.college:795 comp.edu:537

in article <455@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>, mikey@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Mike Yang) says:
> 
> Apparently, the Assistant Chairman for Undergraduate Education at Stanford's
> CS department feels that Modula-2 is on its way out.  I wonder if he's
> aware of the many reasons why Ada is clearly not suitable as a first
> tongue...

Hmm: Some reasons:

  * SCale: ADA is *HUGE*. So huge that it will CERTAINLY bog down freshmen...
if Pascal causes "cancer of the semicolon", Ada causes "syntax overload
explosion". Related to which:

 * Ambiguous syntactic requirements. There's usually four or five different 
ways to declare any given  Ada data structure, all correct. For example,
"junk: array(1..20) of integer;"
"junk: array(integer range 1..20) of integer;"
etc....... at least the syntactic requirements of a language such as Pascal or
Modula ][ aren't so confusing to poor frosh.

I must admit to being biased. USL uses Ada for two of its introductory CS
courses (Pascal for the first, the rest in Ada), and frankly, I despise the
language -- but then, that might be the "C"/assembler hacker talking. Still,
recalling the talk of many years ago about the impossiblity of verifying the
correct operation of the compiler because the language was so complex, what do
they think that the language complexity does to the PROGRAMMER'S
reliability?!. 
--
Eric Green   elg%usl.CSNET     Ollie North for President:
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg      A man we can believe (in).
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