Re: How Would a Hobbyist Learn Ada?

[Stefan Bellon <bellon@axivion.com>]

On Wed, 04 Jun, Steffen Huber wrote:
> Ludovic Brenta wrote:
>
> > How about others? Were you a hobbyist when you learned Ada? Did many
> > people attend formal training?
> 
> I started learning Ada (83) at university attending a short 2-day
> course in preparation for a software project. Our introductory
> language was Modula 2, so the step to Ada was comparatively small for
> the basic language features. I used Ada for all subsequent software
> projects during university, last project with Ada 95, but basically
> only using Unbounded_String from the 95 "new feature set" ;-)
> 
> The diploma thesis was in C++ however, reinforcing my view that
> Ada was the way to go.

My background is similar to Steffen's in a way that I studied at the
same place (and thus same prof, Erhard Plödereder) than Steffen, just a
few years later, so I already started with Ada 95. Diploma thesis was in
C++ as well, which made me wish I had used Ada, too. But I needed GUI
and database bindings which made me look at Qt because at that time
GtkAda and GNADE were no real alternatives, I'm afraid.

> When I decided to write a CD mastering software for RISC OS, [...]

Steffen, you should have written "*the* CD mastering software for RISC
OS". ;-)

> Unfortunately, my daytime job is Java programming since
> I didn't find a suitable "Ada" job when leaving university.

After finishing university I joined staff of the Department of
Programming Languages at University of Stuttgart where Erhard
Plödereder is professor. There I was working on the Bauhaus project
which is implemented in Ada 95 to a large extent. The spin-off Axivion
is now providing solutions for stopping Software Erosion which are
implemented in Ada 95/2005 and based on the work at university. So, my
daytime job luckily involves programming in Ada. :-)

-- 
Stefan Bellon