njb@mu.rice.edu (Nathan Bohlmann) (01/12/91)
My input on the undergraduate use of Ada. I recently (May 90) graduated from Valparaiso University and was part of a 'feeler' course in Ada for those interested. Based on that course, which was expanded to two semesters due to demand of the students, there was this year an option in the freshman level algorithms course. The course has been taught using Pascal as the implementing language since before I was an undergrad. My freshman year, they got around to implementing an advanced course for those who had had experience in high school. This year, Ada was the language used in that advanced course. That was last semester, and from what I have heard, it was extremely successful. This semester, there is a one credit seminar course offered to teach the language itself without the emphasis on the algorithms. There are 48 students registered for the class. This is out of a total of around 350 students in the entire College of Engineering. I guess I forget to mention that this is under the Computer Engineering group there. The goal is to be able to use Ada for the lab work in the upper level courses. The labs there are oriented towards real-time and embedded systems developement. If you want further information about this program, you should contact my father, Dr. Rodney Bohlmann, who is the motivating force behind Computer Engineering at Valpo. He is on bitnet and his email address is ece.rjb@valpo.bitnet. He's always willing to talk about what's going on up there and most certainly would be better able to explain the future of Ada there. Nathan Bohlmann njb@rice.edu