What would be the practical implications of learning a language such as Ada? I've wanted to learn some of these more obscure languages for well over a decade, but you'ld be hard pressed to a find a book that teaches application development in Lisp, Ada, COBOL, Fortran, or pretty much any language which predates ANSI C. I would LOVE to learn these languages, but alas the only one I've had any success with is LISP and thats only because AutoCAD still uses it and there were a ton of example applications to learn from, even then though they were limited to the AutoCAD dialect of LISP which I understand isn't really LISP either. Even with that said, I am still a complete noob with LISP.
Thoughts? On Jan 8, 2008 10:09 AM, Levi Pearson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > You'll notice if you read carefully that he says pretty much the same > thing you do; students should learn about high-level languages, but > not at the expense of low-level knowledge and formal methods. > Although he's clearly a fan of Ada, I don't think he came off as a > bigot. Frankly, I'd like to see more of Ada in the schools and > marketplace. It's got an interesting and powerful type system, > provides all sorts of interesting low-level stuff for embedded and > real-time systems, and has some built-in concurrency primitives. > > --Levi > > > On Jan 8, 2008 9:58 AM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/CrossTalk/2008/01/0801DewarSchonberg.html > > > > I thought it was interesting for a couple of reasons. First, I remember > > hearing back in the '80s that object-oriented and component programming > > were going to make programming more like designing circuits with IC's. I > > think I remember a CACM with legos on the cover. I guess we're finally > > there, maybe. > > > > Second, all the pitfalls listed for java are all the things about java > > that scripting language bigots claim Java doesn't do (admittedly some > > scripting languages do better in some cases). So they all apply, maybe > > even more so, to Python, Perl, Ruby, C#, etc. > > > > Even though he is an Ada bigot, I have to agree somewhat. Java, Python, > > Perl, Ruby, etc. probably shouldn't be the core of a curriculum because > > they're too high-level. But if you learn C and assembly, I don't see any > > reason not to use them. > > > > Whatta y'all think? > > > > Barry Roberts > > > > > > /* > > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > > Don't fear the penguin. > > */ > > > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ > /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
