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- Path: goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU!not-for-mail
- From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU (Richard A. O'Keefe)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada
- Date: 12 Feb 1996 17:25:15 +1100
- Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
- Message-ID: <4fmmgb$4g3@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>
- References: <00001a73+00002504@msn.com> <4fc0ff$ipd@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU> <4fcra7$fva@solutions.solon.com> <dewar.823793016@schonberg> <4fgcu3$c5p@solutions.solon.com>
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-
- I am the one to whom Peter Seebach originally replied.
-
- seebs@solutions.solon.com (Peter Seebach) writes:
- >Sorry; I had been (I thought) responding to a claim that K&R would be a poor
- >book from which to teach C. I would consider C an excellent book to teach C
- >from. The authors themselves, I believe, state that the book assumes some
- >prior programming experience. (Although a good math or philosophy background,
- >and some computer use, seems to suffice.)
-
- I myself learned C from K&R 1. In fact, when I first read K&R 1, I was
- already familiar with Algol 68, Mary, BLISS, and BCPL, so C was just
- "more of the same". For auto-didacts with an adequate computing background,
- K&R is just about perfect for learning C.
-
- The context I had in mind was "books to be used in CS1 and/or CS2", and for
- _that_, I regret to say, K&R (any edition) is not a good textbook for the
- majority of students here, who want more background, more explanation, more
- examples, more hand-holding.
-
- What relevance has this to comp.lang.ada? Well, an extremely important thing
- about any programming text, even if it is for Ada, is the audience it is meant
- for. I learned Ada from the Ada 83 LRM (well, actually, from the stuff that
- appeared in Sigplan Notices and then the Ada 80 LRM). Already knowing about
- Modula (not Modula 2, Modula) and CLU and PL/I and so on made it a real
- pleasure to read the Ada 83 LRM, which I still admire greatly. But you would
- not use it as your primary textbook in a CS1 Ada course.
-
- --
- "conventional orthography is ... a near optimal system for the
- lexical representation of English words." Chomsky & Halle, S.P.E.
- Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ok; RMIT Comp.Sci.
-