gore@nucsrl.UUCP (Jacob Gore) (01/08/87)
I believe that somebody conducted a survey some time ago about the use of Ada
in college-level courses. Were the results of it ever posted? If so, could
someone send me a copy?
Thanks.
Jacob Gore
Northwestern University, Computer Science Research Lab
{ihnp4,chinet}!nucsrl!goreafd@k.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (01/09/87)
I conducted the survey you were referring to, it was a rehash of Larry
Mazlack's ongoing Academic Modula-2 survey. Unfortunately, I lost the
account the survey was being conducted on about two weeks after I
originally posted it. There were only two distinct responses: one for a
course which was only being temporarily offered and didn't expect to be
repeated, and one for a software engineering with Ada course being offered
at Stanford University. I apologize for the mess, the accounts I have now
are on machines that have only limited access to the networks (this may have
already changed, but at the time of the survey little could get through).
In response to your article about introducing object-oriented languages,
the following summarizes my experiences in trying to get Ada accepted
at Purdue:
Purdue uses Pascal for its lower division cs courses, and 'C' for most of
its upper-division/graduate level courses. I managed to get Powell's
Modula-2 compiler into an unsupported directory available to class accounts,
and have used it in several courses. However, last semester I enrolled in
Purdue's Software Engineering course and tried to get an Ada environment
established there. I thought a medium-level language like 'C' was unsuitable
for such a course, which required a large project to be developed by groups
of students.
I was given several reasons why such an environment was infeasible:
a lack of interest, the compiler would require too much time on the Vaxen,
the unavailibility of a validated Ada compiler for the IBM, and so on. A
debate started on a local newsgroup, where some of the unix systems
programmers belittled Ada as a throwback to PL/1, and generally inferior to
'C'. To my knowledge, there is no Ada compiler or environment now at Purdue,
a situation that I hope will soon change. My Software Engineering group
programmed in Modula-2 and 'C', interfacing the two without much trouble,
but I've been told that if disc space runs short, the Modula-2 compiler goes.
Bob Hathaway
afd@k.cc.purdue.eduarny@wayback.UUCP (01/09/87)
In article <3930002@nucsrl.UUCP>, gore@nucsrl.UUCP (Jacob Gore) writes: > I believe that somebody conducted a survey some time ago about the use of Ada > in college-level courses. Were the results of it ever posted? If so, could > someone send me a copy? > > Thanks. > > Jacob Gore > Northwestern University, Computer Science Research Lab > {ihnp4,chinet}!nucsrl!gore ACM SIGAda took a survey of colleges using Ada last year. The results (including responses as of Aug. 1986) were published in the Nov/Dec 1986 issue of Ada Letters (pg. 133). There were about 20 responses. The results seemed very incomplete, with some major universities that I thought were involved in Ada (and teaching it) not listed. But it also lists some otherwise unknown activities. If anyone has additional information about activities, I would suggest informing the SIGAda Education Committee about it. Arny B. Engelson {bonnie|clyde|ihnp4}!wayback!arny AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany, N.J. (201) 386-4816