[GAP] advice on Ada in general programming languages course

[Alejandro R. Mosteo]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> Alejandro R. Mosteo wrote:
> 
>> There are a some obstacles in teaching Ada to novices that I find it's 
>> important to alleviate as fast as possible: string types are a glaring 
>> example (provide some package based around unbounded strings). These 
>> kind of things are at first completely ackwards to people used to 
>> scripting/gc languages. While is important to understand properly the 
>> unconstrained types, I see no point in doing exhaustive manipulation 
>> of character buffers when doing I/O at first. That's just boring and 
>> painful. At least that's what I remember from my Ada (83) origins.
> 
> 
> Can you say why Unbounded is not OK as is (why it needs wrapping), and
> give some idea of what wrapping you have in mind?

Fair point.

Let's see, I don't see nothing fundamentally wrong in Unbounded, but 
when you start adding the "no use" rule, throw in some I/O needs 
(another package(s) to with/instantiate), all that after being as 
teacher in the uneasy situation of saying "yes, String is a string but 
to do that is easier to use this package...", you're already in a 
somewhat defensive position.

For this reason, I see a general-purpose package for comfortable 
string+IO manipulation a great aid to novices. Shorter conversion 
functions (I hated the "To_Unbounded_String"). First programs tend to 
involve string/number manipulation (and hence some console output). That 
can quickly require a few packages. So, if you're adding another package 
to the mix, why not just have only one for your students to use. That 
allows for better focusing in other aspects.

This is a thing that has always been in my mind about standard packages. 
There are some that provide everything you can need, but lack just the 
extra "ergonomy" factor. An example: if you want to trim some string, 
you need to with two packages and call a function in one with arguments 
in the other (Ada.Strings and Ada.Strings.Fixed IIRC). It may be that I 
lose time over too tiny details, kind of a neurosis, but I find these 
things disturbing.

I'm sorry I can't better express the feeling I got when I was learning 
Ada, english is not my primary language.