Re: How (or Where?) to get started on Ada? (Properly)

[Austin Obyrne <austin.obyrne@hotmail.com>]

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 10:14:55 AM UTC+1, e.s.h...@gmail.com wrote:
> Some general details on my situation (that may be useful or not for the question; feel free to skip down to the "TL;DR" marker if you don't want to read them): As a programmer that has spent most of his time in managed environments so far (Java mostly, with some PHP and Python here and there), I have been trying to get more into "native code" recently, in order to be able to control things like memory layout and get deterministic resource usage (and thus deterministic run time performance). Initially I started looking at C/C++, but soon realized that the intricate semantics of C++ were a deal-breaker (and not necessary for what I was looking for anyways) and that C lacked too many libraries (hash tables, file systems, threading, etc.) to be useful for one-man-projects these days (yes there's things like APR or GLib but those are quite a bit of a hassle). Looking at the other options available currently, Ada seemed like the best one (still actively maintained; competitive compiler; windows/linux-portability; .. at times I wonder if we'd be seeing thing like Rust or Go if Ada didn't still have its Pascal syntax...) So here I am, looking into learning Ada.. I have dabbled in it (as well as Turbo Pascal) at various points in time for school/university courses, but those have been very shallow experiences. TL;DR: What I am struggling the most when learning new languages is knowing virtually nothing about what the syntax actually does. I have tried some online tutorials that manage to walk me through the compilation process and then slowly introduce new languages pieces through example programs, but (for me at least) that has been a rather frustrating experience, considering that I'm essentially just copy-pasting code (and having to ignore irrelevant bits in the code that are not relevant yet, but still necessary for it to run).. What I'm looking for is a text that starts from the other way, i.e. explains the language blocks, the data/object model, etc. first, and only after that goes on to provide full examples of working code. I guess this is something I'll only be able to find in a book. I did look on Amazon about available books, but all of them seem fairly dated. "Programming in Ada 2005" by John Barnes did look interesting judging by the reviews, yet I'm not sure of how helpful it will be in covering all details that are relevant to writing useful software these days (things like utf8, interfacing with C, etc.). Do you have any recommendations for me?



Hi,

I’m a retired Engineer and I was first introduced to Ada-83 some 25 years ago – I liked the package concept of Ada and I liked also the kind of intuitive way the source code is written – I always resolved that I would later on learn more about the Ada programming language.  When my retirement came it was well into Ada-95 by that time and PC’s were well established to everyone but not to me – I was familiar with Ada through a main frame piece of directory and I was completely lost with getting started on Ada again via a PC this time.

I had huge difficulty and I sent off for some books (had to get some else to do it from me I was that green) – the person ordered the wrong book and I could well have quit at that point but I sent off again for this second book below and it prove to be my salvation.

There is a rather simplistic model of a Spider program that he uses for anybody that needs that kind of thing but in fairness it is a very good book.  I like the pedagogic style and he assumes nothing about the reader – he expands everything as the Ada enthusiast that he really is and everything is backed with worked examples for you to repeat.

The book comes with compilers that load very easily for Windows, Macos and Linux.

I recommend it and welcome you to the fold.

“Ada-95

Problem Solving and Programme Design” (hope it is still available)

Feldman/Koffman

Includes Ada 95 Compilers

ISBN 0 – 201 – 36123 – X

Good Luck with your studies – I hope  you will not find this too simplistic given your background.

Austin O’Byrne.

adacrypt.