From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1d2825e3bbbe82fb X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) Subject: Textbooks vs. Reference Manuals (was: Need help bad!!!!! (sic)) Date: 1996/10/27 Message-ID: <1996Oct27.182712.1@eisner>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 192606748 x-nntp-posting-host: eisner.decus.org references: <54u8m2$ko1@news.cdsnet.net> <01bbc402$6c7b01c0$088371a5@dhoossr.iquest.com> x-nntp-posting-user: KILGALLEN x-trace: 846458893/24040 organization: LJK Software newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-10-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: n article , dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > Second, the RM is not at all the right source to point people to. Instead > they need to be reading a good text book. Much of the RM is inpenetrable > even to most of the experts, unless you already understand 95% of what > you need already. It *is* good for filling in the remaining subtle 5% Harrumph :-) When I learned Ada, it was from the DEC documentation, which is mainly their rendition of the Ada 83 reference manual. Two other volumes in the DEC Ada documentation give some VMS details, but the only other book I found helpful was the style guide. Lately I have been looking at textbooks, primarily for Ada 95 material. Other than that new material, I have not read anything which surprises me. So did I learn Ada in a horribly inefficient manner, or does Ada 95 look straightforward due to having done object-oriented programming before, or is Ada easier proportional to how many languages one has used before, or is it easier if none of them was C ? We all tend to recommend what works for ourselves. My one training axiom in industry is that some prefer a class, some prefer a mentor and some prefer a set of books, but that division does not seem relevant to the book choice guidance which has Robert provided. Larry Kilgallen