Re: GUI programming --a hopeful newbie =)

[David Botton <david@botton.com>]

> in this case I would suggest, that you first start with console 
> programming until you get some experience with programming in general 
> and the Ada language in special.

I disagree. There is no reason that a first class in Ada should not be:

with GWindows.Message_Boxes; use GWindows.Message_Boxes;

procedure Hello_World is
begin
	Message_Box ("My_App", "Hello World!");
end Hello_world;

and a Second:

I am planning a series of on-line videos to teach GNAVI / Ada 
programming and intend on doing so.

Unless you have a captured audience being forced to learn Ada, its time 
to start thinking out of the box about how to influence people to want 
to learn Ada!


> 
> I think it would be too much at a time if you want learn all at once: 
> programming, Ada, *and* a GUI system. Maybe you will become frustrated 
> soon.

Certainly not if you are using higher level frameworks like GWindows, 
CLAW or JEWL (and to some degree GtkAda).

I find trying to work with Ada.Text_IO more complex to use or teach 
than GUI programming with any of the above ;-)

> 
> Switch to GUI development if you've got some experience.

Start with it. No reason to live in a DOS / Unix prompt world in 2004.

> If you want concentrate on Windows *and* Ada then look at GWindows.

Look at it any ways :-) http://www.gnavi.org/gwindows


> If you think about writing (Windows-)GUI not only with Ada but maybe 
> with Pascal or C, too, then look at the pure Win32-Api which is used 
> very similar with these other languages.

Look at learning GWindows and understanding the source. If you are 
going to program in C, you will want to use the techniques there. If 
you are going to use Pascal, than forget Delphi and get with GNAVI.

> If you think of (maybe one day in the far future) writing for Windows 
> *and* Linux, then have a look at GTK which allows you to write portable 
> GUIs.

GWindows will be on Linux in time, but GtkAda is a good solution if 
your needs are now.

David Botton
GNAVI - The Open Source Visual RAD
http://www.gnavi.org