The Merits of the Continued Instruction of ADA as a First Language at the Naval Postgraduate School

Abstract

This thesis addresses the issue of the continued instruction of structured programming in general and Ada in particular as the first programming language at the Naval Postgraduate School. The catch-22 of industry's dedication to C++ and the Department of Defenses support of Ada makes the choice of the proper language at a military graduate school difficult The change to the present curriculum provides an opportunity to collect valuable data upon which to base this decision. The approach was to identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of Ada and C++ as they pertain to first quarter non-computer science undergraduates and meeting the needs of Department of Defense Directives. Additionally, a set of programming projects to be solved by students in both language was generated. Analysis of the students' work will provide another set of data points to make an informed decision. Based on its reliability, standardization and its Department of Defense support, we conclude that Ada9X offers significant advantages over C++ and should be selected as the first programming language. Ada9X offers both the object oriented paradigm and is in line with the Department of Defense's commitment to Ada for non-COTS applications. Ada, C++, Structured programming, Object oriented programming

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1994
Accession Number
ADA286124

Entities

People

  • Thomas C. Gomez

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Department Of Defense
  • Education
  • Governments
  • High Level Languages
  • Object Oriented Programming
  • Procedural Programming Language
  • Programming Languages
  • Reliability
  • Software Development
  • Structured Programming
  • Students
  • United States Naval Academy

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

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