Re: Ada as a first language

["Brian" <phaedrusalt@hotmail.com>]

Hello Chris,

Before I begin, you should know that I've been using Ada since the mid 80's, 
and it's still my language of choice for any project.  Since that time I've 
worked on a wide variety of projects, including a satellite, a submarine, a 
variety of missiles, tanks, other weapons and assorted non-embedded work. 
Also, I did my robotics work at UCLA in Ada, and it was a lot of fun!

So, as an obviously rabid Ada-geek, would I recommend Ada for you?  No.  Ada 
is a great language for beginning programmers, it helps newbies to develop 
discipline and learn software development skills that will last them a 
lifetime.  But you didn't say that you wanted to learn SW development, you 
said that you wanted to do some embedded robotics.  And Ada is far from the 
easiest path for someone in your shoes.

What kind of projects did you want to try?  There are some very good kits 
available that provide more "fun for the buck" than you might get with Ada. 
(Think Lego Mindstorms NXT, or the Parallax BASIC Stamp processor, or a 
variant of the Processing language called Wiring that has a nice bit of 
hardware.)  Also, there are a number of microprocessors available that are 
programmable in C or assembly.

Ada is a beautiful, elegant language.  Feature rich, it offers a lot to the 
seasoned and newbie coder, but it's not the easiest language.  By far.  Oh, 
and there are a number of languages with better libraries.  Sure, you COULD 
spend a lot of time interfacing to those libraries, but isn't that time 
better spent making your robot move, see, navigate or whatever?

Good luck, and let us know how it goes!
Brian Salter