Abstract types, ADA packages, and the teaching of data structures

Abstract

This paper describes a course in Data Structures offered to upper-division undergraduates and beginning graduate students. In addition to the usual data-structures topics, Computer Science 159 places a strong emphasis on software engineering principles, especially the implementation of abstract data types using Ada packages. Two programming project series are presented; documentation requirements are described in some detail. Attention is paid to the problem of translating high-level design concepts, as embodied in Ada, into the more limited data structures and modularization features of earlier languages.