From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
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From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!cw
Newsgroups: net.lang.ada
Title: Better Ada Reference List
Article-I.D.: eagle.920
Posted: Wed Apr 27 10:19:49 1983
Received: Thu Apr 28 01:46:24 1983
References: dciem.224
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>
Message-ID: <20200615230048.CKHc-bfro8U_iCsxm77Dd9nYmXKi9oqEwpJfAQ1z-I0@z>


A recent article listed three items in an Ada reference list. 
They were the 1979 SIGPLAN Preliminary Reference Manual, Wegner's book,
and the Ledgard book with the 1980 reference manual bound in.
All three are badly out of date because they refer to old versions of the
standard.  I suggest the following:

	Reference Manual for the Ada Programming Language
	ANSI/MIL-STD-1815 A

	This should be available in a number of places soon.
	It was accepted in February 1983 and the copy I have
	is date January 1983.  Government Printing Office
	will no doubt be one source; Ada Letters, the publication
	of AdaTEC, may devote a whole issue to reprinting the manual.
	This new manual is also considerably clearer (though still
	a reference manual in style) than earlier ones.


	Narain Gehani
	Ada: An Advanced Introduction
	Prentice-Hall, 1983.

	Gehani actually wrote his book using the 1982 reference manual.
	However, he had a good handle on what the changes would be and
	there is almost nothing in error because of manual changes.  He
	will be publishing a new edition soon and the hardbound version
	(I think) will include the new ANSI reference manual.  This is
	the currently best book for experienced programmers.

	J.G.P. Barnes
	Programming in Ada
	Addison-Wesley, 1982

	I.C. Pyle
	The Ada Programming Language
	Prentice-Hall International, 1981

	These two older books are good elementary introductions and
	are not likely to be seriously misleading about the ANSI
	standard language.

	
	Grady Booch
	Software Engineering With Ada
	Benjamin/Cummings Publishing, 1983.

	I have not read this book; it must be based on the July, 1982,
	manual; hence, it is probably slightly out-of-date.  It has been
	described to me by another reader as "religious"; that is,
	it sells a certain style of programming very heavily.  Still,
	probably a reasonable book.

Charles