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Teaching python (programming) to children

David Andreas Alderud aaldv97 at student.remove-this-part.vxu.se
Thu Nov 8 11:24:55 EST 2001 
>    I was an Ada83 programmer (on a non-military project) and I don't think
> its a good language for beginners. Ada is too large to be fully understood
> within a reasonable time. Type based overloading is very complex to
> understand and predict. The task feature was particularly troublesome as
it
> did not map onto other well established multi-tasking models. Ada95 looks
> even more complex with one core language and 10 optional annexes.

Where you tought Ada prior to this? Most people with negative image of Ada
got off on the wrong foot, which, of cource, is true for everything.
Ada83 had only 63 reserved words, Ada95 has only 68. Thougt in all fairness
Python only has 28.
Task are extremly simple and powerful, they work excelent in multitasking
envirionment; tasks are like threading and any user, including the
beginners, can use tasks if they can use packages, which they can if they
ever printed anything to the screen.

>    Ada's strict typing goes too far adding much noise to basic operations
if
> used to define all variables with appropriate constraints. Eventually
> programmers give up on this and start using the simple basic types
instead.

I've found this to be very flexible, maybe you're school with C and that
caused problems?

>    Use appears to have contracted to just military projects here, most
> commercial users dropping it for C/C++ to increase productivity.

Strange since in every report I've seen on productivity Smalltalk wins and
Ada in general is on a strong second place, C++ productivity is generally
considered to be 1/6:th or lower of Smalltalk for example.
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