"Practices like random police roadblocks (normally associated with military directorships)"
While a seat on the board of directors of a military company sounds much nicer than living in a dictatorship, I'm not sure what it's got to do with random police roadblocks.
But back to your point - in Australia we have random alcohol and drug testing on the roads, and the number of drink drivers has been reduced considerably.
I do know how to use Ada, and in fact, for some tasks it is pretty good (protocol decoding for example).
But you have to basically define your record type twice in order to do this. You have to define it once, then define how it is laid out. You only do it once, and it helps separate the logical from the physical. I don't think it's that big a deal.
My assertion is that it sucks for low level hardware access because you need to write arbitrary data to hardware (yes it is possible, but it is cumbersome) How is it cumbersome? Define an address and poke data at that address. Use the generic System.Address_To_Access_Conversion and you'll be sweet.
Also, most low level issues are horribly badly documented (such as calling conventions)
You can specify a calling convention (e.g. pragma Convention (C, myfunction);) which causes you to use C convention.
Scalars are passed by pass in, pass out, other variables are passed by reference (this is defined in the language).
...and there are no shift operators, meaning that your code will be littered with X / 2**Y (making the code more or less unreadable), there is also no way to properly do an arithmetic shift in Ada on a modular type. I don't know what version of Ada you are using, but Ada95 (the 13 year old version of the language) has package Interfaces, which defines Shift_Left, Shift_Right, Shift_Right_Arithemetic, Rotate_Right and Rotate_Left as intrinsic functions (i.e. direct code inserts) for all the major data sizes.
Further the rules for pointers and whether they can be passed into other functions in Ada are encouraging the use of global variables (a guaranteed way to fail if your program is using multiple threads).
The rules are to prevent dangling pointers. They don't cause real problems - define your types and access types in a package at the library level, and you'll never have any problems.
Think about how what a pointer is pointing at (stack based variable?) and realise that Ada's normal access types won't leave you with a dangling pointer and you'll understand how they work.
Not to forget the idiocies with the package system, causing weird issues like circular package dependencies (Java did it right in this aspect). Yep it was pretty silly. They finally fixed it with Ada2005, but I think the syntax leaves something to be desired.
Other complaints I may add is that all the Ada compilers that I have played around with are horribly slow.
The Gnat compiler is the one I'm most familiar with, and it seems to run ok. I certainly like the quality of its error messages (the best I've -ever- seen).
Also, I would not write hardware simulation in Ada if i want performance, you are chasing constants in that case, and then C is the only way (and I have worked with implementing dynamically recompiling CPU-simulators, so I have a certain perspective on that). You'd need to show us code that would be faster in the C world than it would in the Ada world. There is nothing intrinsic to the language that prevents similar features from being compiled into the same code.
Re:Ada was designed for multiple CPUs
on
The Return of Ada
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· Score: 1
Just playing with toy implementations like GNAT that weren't validated. (Remember, this was in the late '80s -- GNAT might be validated now, I don't know.)
Compilers are run by a formal test (ACATS (http://www.ada-auth.org/acats.html)), but the Ada name is no longer trademarked (which required companies to validate before they could market their compiler as an "Ada" compiler).
Gnat is certainly an up to date compiler and implements all of the features required in the language, and has been instrumental in adding new features which have subsequently made it into the language in subsequent revisions.
Re:shhh! don't go blabbing this all over the place
on
The Return of Ada
·
· Score: 1
On the downside...
-- Garbage collection which was optional to implement. We never used it.
The language allowed for garbage collection, but I don't think any compilers actually implemented it in the way we think of for languages like Java. You could allocate a storage pool for a particular access type (read pointer) which would make GC possible for that type pointed at.
-- Concurrency primitives built into the language, as opposed to library calls. I think this was an attempt to simplify programmers' lives, but it complicated the compiler support, and was limited anyway. You couldn't do spinlocks/rwlocks etc. w/out having to fall back to a library. Ada95 vastly improved the concurrency support. Ada83 presumed that the rendezvous (very high level mechanism) would be sufficient, but it didn't work for some simple models (producer/consumer problems) leading people to implement low level features (simple locks) with high level expensive features (rendezvous). What were they thinking???
Ada95 has protected objects with auto computed guards which are -very- nice.
-- No standard support for bitwise operators in Ada83 (fixed in Ada95). There was, but it was a bit of a fiddle. You'd have to use unchecked conversion to convert to a packed array of boolean, which you can then and/or/not/xor to your heart's content. Unchecked Conversion back again.
Ada95 is much simpler!
Re:shhh! don't go blabbing this all over the place
on
The Return of Ada
·
· Score: 1
"The doctrinaire variable type enforcements have yet to be equaled but OO it really aint."
OO it really is. It doesn't look like most OO languages, but it has all the features that define OO-ish-ness.
Got it in Ada95 (with syntactical changes to make it look more like other languages in Ada2005), so I'm surprised you haven't seen it.
It's really pathetic that you can get modded +4 insightful by not knowing what the hell you're talking about. I mean seriously, how much religion have you studied? Kierkegaard? Augustine? Aquinas?
How much of the belief systems of the Vikings have you studied? What about all of the Indian theology and philosophers? Have you studied them all?
One of the problems with these guys is that they all begin with the a-priori assumption that god does exist. Look at Aquinas' "Five Ways" - are any of his statements provable? They are as fact based as the FSM, and about as relevant to any discussion of the reality of the world.
Augustine's work presumes a literal creation, one which conflicts with the reality of evolution. Let's face facts - most of the arguments (untestable, unprovable waffle) from these philosophers have been overtaken by the real world analysis of science.
This is just argument-from-definition. "I define religion to be based on untestaable claims and dogma". Nevermind that:
1. religious claims are frequently testable, even if the data is not quantifiable or transferable.
2. science is inherently untestable (see: "law of causation")
I've got no idea what a frequently testable religious claim would be if it's not quantifiable or testable. Presumably you are referring to anecdotal evidence ("I prayed and I got better") ignoring the "I prayed, but I didn't get better". (see the "why does god hate amputees" site).
As to your second point - Meh. Maybe it's untestable at some level - we assume causality, but it -seems- to work very well indeed. A worthwhile principle to hang on to given how effective it has proven to be. Worrying about science not being testable because of this is rather clutching at straws.
But hey, if it makes you feel better to draw a big line in your head and have "science" on one side and "religion" on the other, I suppose it has served its (unscientific) purpose.
I think i'll draw a line in the sand:-). Science in the corner of testability, repeatability (with the proviso that all knowledge is provisional), religion in the other corner with just waffle about what people -think- is the world around them.
I think science is great because -it works-
Yeah. Because nothing bad has ever been done in the name of science.
You can move the goalposts of the argument if you like, but it's obvious what you are doing.
Religion on the other hand...
And nothing good has ever been done in the name of religion.
Clutching at strawmen again? I never made this claim, I was saying that religion is not provable - your last post which I didn't respond to had a very lame example of what you consider proof, which I find totally underwhelming.
However I will ask you the same question that Christopher Hitchens asks - what good could a religious person do that could only be done because of their religion - what could I not do because I am an atheist?
I thought it was the Christian right that was supposed to see everything in stark black-and-white...
You are no doubt sarcastically attributing this attitude to me, but you are wrong.
Your statement is more indicative of prejudice than anything else. Not all religions are based on "untestable claims and dogma".
Sorry but I've not noticed any religious claims that are testable. Perhaps you could fill everyone in on them, and list the experiments we could use to falsify them.
Perhaps like the power of intercessory prayer (I have no idea if you believe in this or not) which has been tested and found lacking (will you pray to heal my amputation?)
In fact, a great many religions rely on personal experience and experimentation, and are differentiated from science by the nature of the data collected (unquantifiable) and not by an embrace of blind faith.
Personal experience is way overrated. The brain works hard to convince you you are great, correct, never wrong, have a great memory etc, yet most studies of the brain & human behaviour show how cautious and judicious we should be about accepting such testimony.
You have done just what I criticized: taken one version of religion (the stupid version) and conflated it with religion in general.
Ah, the old "you haven't criticised what -i- believe in" line. Heard it too many times to be interested. All versions of religion are stupid, because they aren't based on testable claims, in fact the opposite is true.
The bible itself (just as one example) decries this stupid approach to religion in John 7L17:
"17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."
Translation: test the doctrine out in your life and through personal experience you will come to know if it is true or not.
According to the book of Cordelia Fine ("A mind of it's own : how the brain distorts and deceives") I should be very wary of people who establish truth solely though personal experience. Given the book was written based on mountains of experiments by psychologists world wide, brain scanning techniques etc, and not 1500 years ago, I think i'll take it's recommendations more seriously.
Furthermore it is trivial to see that religion without testing and experimentation is frought with moral dilemmas. If the point of religion is to accept dogma without reason, than there is no moral distinction between someone who accepts religion A and religion B, and therefore God is unjust to differentiate between the two.
So I've just illustrated the obvious moral problems with blind-faith based religion and the scriptural basis for Christianity (which I'm not claiming is unique in this regard) to establish a reason and evidence based approach to religion.
Most people take their religion on blind faith which is why there is such a strong correlation b/w a parent's religion, and their children's.
The problem is that you, like many young materialists, are so wrapped up in ridiculing the stupid version of religion that you're unwilling to consider the possibility that other and less intellectually retarded versions may exist. Try talking to a philosopher of religion or a trained theologian and I think your preconceptions about the role of reason in religion will be challenged.
It's been a long time since I've been called "young"!:-). "Stupid version of religion" is a tautology. I notice that in your second sentence you subtly change the goalposts from "is religion true" to 'the role of religion'. Cute. In any case I have read a lot of the stuff that the religious write, and it's crap (the emperor's new clothes comes to mind). Philosophers can be interesting (Peter Singer is,and he's an atheist. So too was Nietzsche).
Science, on the other hand, is certain *intended* to be as you describe. But you're contrasting religion at it's worst with science at it's best. The fact of the matter is that while what you say is theoretically true about science (and theoretically false about religion) in practice science (e.g. the body of professional scientists, publications, and the theories
"But if the definition of religion is "a series of untestable and unverifiable dogmas which are adhered to with irrational zeal" than science itself is in serious danger of becoming religion."
And of course this is completely bass-ackwards. Religion and science are antithetical. Religion is based on untestable claims and dogma. Science is based on repeatable observations for gathering facts, and theory to provide a consistent framework to explain them.
The earlier poster bemoaned the fact that religion is seen as antithetical to science, but the fundamental belief of testability in science is simply missing in religion. It would be interesting to see why science is "in serious danger of becoming a religion". I think science is great because -it works-. Religion on the other hand...
It's a tricky problem trying to decide what order to teach concepts in.
Some people go for algorithms first, others say analysis/program design. Introducing MVC too early is likely to confuse a number of students. Introducing it too late is likely to lead to frustration for others (when they get poor program design).
I suspect some time spent evaluating good existing programs and why they are well structured would be useful.
I'm a slightly less partial party. I've taught Ada to first year students, and our school replaced Ada with Java. Some observations are...
Students found Ada a relatively simple language to start with (if you choose an appropriate subset)
Java can have more overhead for a beginning student
Lecturers are often tempted to push a lot of "stuff" in intro subjects
Java GUI motivates some students to get more involved
Many of my students regretted that Ada would no longer be taught in first year (having quite enjoyed it)
No matter what you start with, teaching students to be better programmers takes more than just a language. Each language allows you to teach a specific set of skills, and Ada is not bad for teaching some important SE skills (IMHO).
I think pointers are overrated as a first year concept, and can wait for later years.
The forum thread had been running for many months, but in late August there was some real action starting to occur on getting information for legal action against 2clix.
My guess is that they would like to shut the thread down and prevent more people from getting involved in suing them.
"Ada does a lot more checks on the code than Pascal does and will likely be a bit slower anyway."
Possibly. I think for similar programs though the extra checks shouldn't come into account. Pascal always checked array boundaries, and so long as you are only doing standard programming (no subtypes, no derived types etc.) it should be comparable.
Gnat Ada does use a source file model for the packages, so has to rescan any "with"ed packages (similar to #include) with every compilation unit. Does FreePascal precompile things? That could make it faster...
* Available on a larger variety of platforms and OSes.
Do you think so? Ada is available (as others have stated) as part of the GNU compiler collection, so is available on a large number of systems.
Other compiler vendors supply compilers for other more obscure processors. How do you know that Pascal is more available?
* Great support for interfacing with external code.
It's pretty ordinary in comparison to Ada's Interface package hierarchy and collection of pragmas allowing you to specify in very fine detail. I just looked at the language reference section in FreePascal and it doesn't come close.
* The compiler is wickedly fast and is really good at producing compact executables.
If it's using gcc to do the code generation, then Gnat (which also uses gcc) should do the same job. I don't know about other compilers.
* FPC supports several different pascal dialects.
...and that's a good thing? I think one of the strengths of Ada is that all compilers implement the same language (except for the optional packages, which can be a problem).
I cut off the end of my finger with a drop saw. Picked up the piece and off to hospital. Emergency surgery for reattachment, in hospital for 5 days with leeches, lots of drips and painkillers.
After 5 days the tip died, so back home for another week before it was removed and I had a skin graft to cover up the end.
Numerous trips back to hospital for checkups, as well as weekly hand therapy to get movement & desensitation of my "new" finger.
The therapists told me to come back whenever I liked if I was having problems.
The interesting part (especially after seeing an extract from Michael Moore's movie about someone in a similar situation in the US and how he had to choose which of the two fingers he cut off he could afford to have reattached) was that the total cost to me was...
$0.
It's this way for most everyone in Australia.
"However, animals such as dogs can produce vitamin C, but humans can not. However, humans do need vitamin C to live. How do you explain that situation. Low vitamin D results in something that will kill you slowly, like cancer, but low vitamin C will kill you much faster."
There was a mutation in the gene that results in our ability to synthesise Vitamin C early in the primate days (before most of the primates split off in fact). Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Orang-Utans etc all have this fault gene. Mostly it isn't noticed because the primate family live in Vitamin C rich environments.
Didn't care that much for the hassle of music until hard disc drives came down in price enough for me to rip my CDs. After I got my iPod I suddenly got interested in buying a lot more music. My collection is at least x3 or x4 larger than it used to be because of the iPod.
I suspect that the concept of iPods driving more music sales simply hasn't occured to this moron.
Hi Ash,
You'll be pleased to know that the SE subject now has wikis, bug tracking (roundup), CVS and Eclipse as tools that groups are expected to use...
Dale
Slashdot Mirror
While a seat on the board of directors of a military company sounds much nicer than living in a dictatorship, I'm not sure what it's got to do with random police roadblocks.
But back to your point - in Australia we have random alcohol and drug testing on the roads, and the number of drink drivers has been reduced considerably.
But you have to basically define your record type twice in order to do this.
You have to define it once, then define how it is laid out. You only do it once, and it helps separate the logical from the physical. I don't think it's that big a deal.
My assertion is that it sucks for low level hardware access because you need to write arbitrary data to hardware (yes it is possible, but it is cumbersome) How is it cumbersome? Define an address and poke data at that address. Use the generic System.Address_To_Access_Conversion and you'll be sweet.
Also, most low level issues are horribly badly documented (such as calling conventions)
You can specify a calling convention (e.g. pragma Convention (C, myfunction);) which causes you to use C convention. Scalars are passed by pass in, pass out, other variables are passed by reference (this is defined in the language).
...and there are no shift operators, meaning that your code will be littered with X / 2**Y (making the code more or less unreadable), there is also no way to properly do an arithmetic shift in Ada on a modular type.I don't know what version of Ada you are using, but Ada95 (the 13 year old version of the language) has package Interfaces, which defines Shift_Left, Shift_Right, Shift_Right_Arithemetic, Rotate_Right and Rotate_Left as intrinsic functions (i.e. direct code inserts) for all the major data sizes.
Further the rules for pointers and whether they can be passed into other functions in Ada are encouraging the use of global variables (a guaranteed way to fail if your program is using multiple threads).
The rules are to prevent dangling pointers. They don't cause real problems - define your types and access types in a package at the library level, and you'll never have any problems. Think about how what a pointer is pointing at (stack based variable?) and realise that Ada's normal access types won't leave you with a dangling pointer and you'll understand how they work.
Not to forget the idiocies with the package system, causing weird issues like circular package dependencies (Java did it right in this aspect).
Yep it was pretty silly. They finally fixed it with Ada2005, but I think the syntax leaves something to be desired.
Other complaints I may add is that all the Ada compilers that I have played around with are horribly slow.
The Gnat compiler is the one I'm most familiar with, and it seems to run ok. I certainly like the quality of its error messages (the best I've -ever- seen).
Also, I would not write hardware simulation in Ada if i want performance, you are chasing constants in that case, and then C is the only way (and I have worked with implementing dynamically recompiling CPU-simulators, so I have a certain perspective on that).
You'd need to show us code that would be faster in the C world than it would in the Ada world. There is nothing intrinsic to the language that prevents similar features from being compiled into the same code.
Compilers are run by a formal test (ACATS (http://www.ada-auth.org/acats.html)), but the Ada name is no longer trademarked (which required companies to validate before they could market their compiler as an "Ada" compiler).
Gnat is certainly an up to date compiler and implements all of the features required in the language, and has been instrumental in adding new features which have subsequently made it into the language in subsequent revisions.
On the downside
-- Garbage collection which was optional to implement. We never used it.
The language allowed for garbage collection, but I don't think any compilers actually implemented it in the way we think of for languages like Java. You could allocate a storage pool for a particular access type (read pointer) which would make GC possible for that type pointed at.
-- Concurrency primitives built into the language, as opposed to library calls. I think this was an attempt to simplify programmers' lives, but it complicated the compiler support, and was limited anyway. You couldn't do spinlocks/rwlocks etc. w/out having to fall back to a library.
Ada95 vastly improved the concurrency support. Ada83 presumed that the rendezvous (very high level mechanism) would be sufficient, but it didn't work for some simple models (producer/consumer problems) leading people to implement low level features (simple locks) with high level expensive features (rendezvous). What were they thinking???
Ada95 has protected objects with auto computed guards which are -very- nice.
-- No standard support for bitwise operators in Ada83 (fixed in Ada95).
There was, but it was a bit of a fiddle. You'd have to use unchecked conversion to convert to a packed array of boolean, which you can then and/or/not/xor to your heart's content. Unchecked Conversion back again.
Ada95 is much simpler!
OO it really is. It doesn't look like most OO languages, but it has all the features that define OO-ish-ness. Got it in Ada95 (with syntactical changes to make it look more like other languages in Ada2005), so I'm surprised you haven't seen it.
Perhaps you're stuck changing over Ada83 code?
How much of the belief systems of the Vikings have you studied? What about all of the Indian theology and philosophers? Have you studied them all?
One of the problems with these guys is that they all begin with the a-priori assumption that god does exist. Look at Aquinas' "Five Ways" - are any of his statements provable? They are as fact based as the FSM, and about as relevant to any discussion of the reality of the world.
Augustine's work presumes a literal creation, one which conflicts with the reality of evolution. Let's face facts - most of the arguments (untestable, unprovable waffle) from these philosophers have been overtaken by the real world analysis of science.
This is just argument-from-definition. "I define religion to be based on untestaable claims and dogma". Nevermind that:
1. religious claims are frequently testable, even if the data is not quantifiable or transferable.
2. science is inherently untestable (see: "law of causation") I've got no idea what a frequently testable religious claim would be if it's not quantifiable or testable. Presumably you are referring to anecdotal evidence ("I prayed and I got better") ignoring the "I prayed, but I didn't get better". (see the "why does god hate amputees" site). As to your second point - Meh. Maybe it's untestable at some level - we assume causality, but it -seems- to work very well indeed. A worthwhile principle to hang on to given how effective it has proven to be. Worrying about science not being testable because of this is rather clutching at straws.
But hey, if it makes you feel better to draw a big line in your head and have "science" on one side and "religion" on the other, I suppose it has served its (unscientific) purpose.
I think i'll draw a line in the sand :-). Science in the corner of testability, repeatability (with the proviso that all knowledge is provisional), religion in the other corner with just waffle about what people -think- is the world around them.
I think science is great because -it works-
Yeah. Because nothing bad has ever been done in the name of science.
You can move the goalposts of the argument if you like, but it's obvious what you are doing.
Religion on the other hand...
And nothing good has ever been done in the name of religion.
Clutching at strawmen again? I never made this claim, I was saying that religion is not provable - your last post which I didn't respond to had a very lame example of what you consider proof, which I find totally underwhelming.
However I will ask you the same question that Christopher Hitchens asks - what good could a religious person do that could only be done because of their religion - what could I not do because I am an atheist?
I thought it was the Christian right that was supposed to see everything in stark black-and-white...
You are no doubt sarcastically attributing this attitude to me, but you are wrong.
Sorry but I've not noticed any religious claims that are testable. Perhaps you could fill everyone in on them, and list the experiments we could use to falsify them.
Perhaps like the power of intercessory prayer (I have no idea if you believe in this or not) which has been tested and found lacking (will you pray to heal my amputation?)
In fact, a great many religions rely on personal experience and experimentation, and are differentiated from science by the nature of the data collected (unquantifiable) and not by an embrace of blind faith.
Personal experience is way overrated. The brain works hard to convince you you are great, correct, never wrong, have a great memory etc, yet most studies of the brain & human behaviour show how cautious and judicious we should be about accepting such testimony. You have done just what I criticized: taken one version of religion (the stupid version) and conflated it with religion in general. Ah, the old "you haven't criticised what -i- believe in" line. Heard it too many times to be interested. All versions of religion are stupid, because they aren't based on testable claims, in fact the opposite is true.
The bible itself (just as one example) decries this stupid approach to religion in John 7L17: "17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." Translation: test the doctrine out in your life and through personal experience you will come to know if it is true or not.
According to the book of Cordelia Fine ("A mind of it's own : how the brain distorts and deceives") I should be very wary of people who establish truth solely though personal experience. Given the book was written based on mountains of experiments by psychologists world wide, brain scanning techniques etc, and not 1500 years ago, I think i'll take it's recommendations more seriously.
Furthermore it is trivial to see that religion without testing and experimentation is frought with moral dilemmas. If the point of religion is to accept dogma without reason, than there is no moral distinction between someone who accepts religion A and religion B, and therefore God is unjust to differentiate between the two.
So I've just illustrated the obvious moral problems with blind-faith based religion and the scriptural basis for Christianity (which I'm not claiming is unique in this regard) to establish a reason and evidence based approach to religion.
Most people take their religion on blind faith which is why there is such a strong correlation b/w a parent's religion, and their children's.
The problem is that you, like many young materialists, are so wrapped up in ridiculing the stupid version of religion that you're unwilling to consider the possibility that other and less intellectually retarded versions may exist. Try talking to a philosopher of religion or a trained theologian and I think your preconceptions about the role of reason in religion will be challenged.
It's been a long time since I've been called "young"! :-). "Stupid version of religion" is a tautology. I notice that in your second sentence you subtly change the goalposts from "is religion true" to 'the role of religion'. Cute. In any case I have read a lot of the stuff that the religious write, and it's crap (the emperor's new clothes comes to mind). Philosophers can be interesting (Peter Singer is,and he's an atheist. So too was Nietzsche).
Science, on the other hand, is certain *intended* to be as you describe. But you're contrasting religion at it's worst with science at it's best. The fact of the matter is that while what you say is theoretically true about science (and theoretically false about religion) in practice science (e.g. the body of professional scientists, publications, and the theories
"But if the definition of religion is "a series of untestable and unverifiable dogmas which are adhered to with irrational zeal" than science itself is in serious danger of becoming religion." And of course this is completely bass-ackwards. Religion and science are antithetical. Religion is based on untestable claims and dogma. Science is based on repeatable observations for gathering facts, and theory to provide a consistent framework to explain them. The earlier poster bemoaned the fact that religion is seen as antithetical to science, but the fundamental belief of testability in science is simply missing in religion. It would be interesting to see why science is "in serious danger of becoming a religion". I think science is great because -it works-. Religion on the other hand...
"Would it be worth it though?"
I wonder. Burning up all of those hydrocarbons may put a serious dent in our oxygen levels.
It's a tricky problem trying to decide what order to teach concepts in.
Some people go for algorithms first, others say analysis/program design. Introducing MVC too early is likely to confuse a number of students. Introducing it too late is likely to lead to frustration for others (when they get poor program design).
I suspect some time spent evaluating good existing programs and why they are well structured would be useful.
I'm a slightly less partial party. I've taught Ada to first year students, and our school replaced Ada with Java. Some observations are...
Students found Ada a relatively simple language to start with (if you choose an appropriate subset)
Java can have more overhead for a beginning student
Lecturers are often tempted to push a lot of "stuff" in intro subjects
Java GUI motivates some students to get more involved
Many of my students regretted that Ada would no longer be taught in first year (having quite enjoyed it)
No matter what you start with, teaching students to be better programmers takes more than just a language. Each language allows you to teach a specific set of skills, and Ada is not bad for teaching some important SE skills (IMHO).
I think pointers are overrated as a first year concept, and can wait for later years.
Black Sky Of Death
http://image.blog.livedoor.jp/orcinus_/imgs/8/d/8d1bb555.png
A police "sniper" operating this from a rooftop would be hard to hold accountable.
The forum thread had been running for many months, but in late August there was some real action starting to occur on getting information for legal action against 2clix.
My guess is that they would like to shut the thread down and prevent more people from getting involved in suing them.
I've used Ada off and on, and never had this reaction. What do you think was wrong with it?
Possibly. I think for similar programs though the extra checks shouldn't come into account. Pascal always checked array boundaries, and so long as you are only doing standard programming (no subtypes, no derived types etc.) it should be comparable.
Gnat Ada does use a source file model for the packages, so has to rescan any "with"ed packages (similar to #include) with every compilation unit. Does FreePascal precompile things? That could make it faster...
* Available on a larger variety of platforms and OSes.
...and that's a good thing? I think one of the strengths of Ada is that all compilers implement the same language (except for the optional packages, which can be a problem).
Do you think so? Ada is available (as others have stated) as part of the GNU compiler collection, so is available on a large number of systems. Other compiler vendors supply compilers for other more obscure processors. How do you know that Pascal is more available?
* Great support for interfacing with external code.
It's pretty ordinary in comparison to Ada's Interface package hierarchy and collection of pragmas allowing you to specify in very fine detail. I just looked at the language reference section in FreePascal and it doesn't come close.
* The compiler is wickedly fast and is really good at producing compact executables.
If it's using gcc to do the code generation, then Gnat (which also uses gcc) should do the same job. I don't know about other compilers.
* FPC supports several different pascal dialects.
I cut off the end of my finger with a drop saw. Picked up the piece and off to hospital. Emergency surgery for reattachment, in hospital for 5 days with leeches, lots of drips and painkillers. After 5 days the tip died, so back home for another week before it was removed and I had a skin graft to cover up the end. Numerous trips back to hospital for checkups, as well as weekly hand therapy to get movement & desensitation of my "new" finger. The therapists told me to come back whenever I liked if I was having problems. The interesting part (especially after seeing an extract from Michael Moore's movie about someone in a similar situation in the US and how he had to choose which of the two fingers he cut off he could afford to have reattached) was that the total cost to me was... $0. It's this way for most everyone in Australia.
There was a mutation in the gene that results in our ability to synthesise Vitamin C early in the primate days (before most of the primates split off in fact). Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Orang-Utans etc all have this fault gene. Mostly it isn't noticed because the primate family live in Vitamin C rich environments.
There's more about this here...http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sec tion2.html#molecular_vestiges
Good example of this here
Comments have more examples...
The really efficient people have...
void play() {
work();
}
Didn't care that much for the hassle of music until hard disc drives came down in price enough for me to rip my CDs. After I got my iPod I suddenly got interested in buying a lot more music. My collection is at least x3 or x4 larger than it used to be because of the iPod.
I suspect that the concept of iPods driving more music sales simply hasn't occured to this moron.
The problem with teaching to the Lowest Common Demominator is that sometimes you get a divide by zero error.
Hi Ash, You'll be pleased to know that the SE subject now has wikis, bug tracking (roundup), CVS and Eclipse as tools that groups are expected to use... Dale