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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!peer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!post02.iad.highwinds-media.com!fx22.iad.POSTED!not-for-mail From: HerrDoktor User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.2.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Newcomers to comp.lang.ada: welcome and how did you end up here ? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 141108-9, 11/08/2014), Outbound message X-Antivirus-Status: Clean Message-ID: <30y7w.610628$Lj7.9801@fx22.iad> X-Complaints-To: abuse@newsdemon.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 23:51:27 UTC Organization: http://www.NewsDemon.com Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 15:51:41 -0800 X-Received-Bytes: 3125 X-Received-Body-CRC: 4018782050 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:23089 Date: 2014-11-08T15:51:41-08:00 List-Id: I became interested in Ada a few years ago. I used Modula 2 in the 80s, made and sold a few toolbox library even, then somehow I got on the C/C++ path and was drifting with the flow over the years. More and more I got the feeling that this development was going the wrong way, everything there was becoming more and more complicated and I started to remember the good old days, when we made powerful programs without having to deal with multiple levels of templates and multiple inheritance and whatever makes live hell these days, and I started to look around if there wasn't a language that was a bit more like Modula 2 and still actively supported by compiler vendors. I am also not a big fan of OO techniques and part of what got me interested in Ada is that it is easier or perhaps more natural there, to restrict OO programming to the absolute minimum and program more in an imperative style which, in my view is more natural to the environment we're working with (a machine with memory that contains instructions and data and an ALU). I realize that my views are contrary to mostly all language that are en vogue today, but I think programming can become less complicated by looking backwards, not "forward" and using proven techniques like Structured Development. Anyhow, I was able to write a fairly nice debug monitor system in Ada after reading Barne's book and I was relatively impressed that Ada enabled me to write a non trivial program pretty easy as a newcommer to the language. Also, contrary to my experiences in C++, the program was stable pretty soon without crashing with new errors long after I finished it, which also impressed me. Right now, I am stuck with C++ but I intend to use Ada more and more for tools if possible. My next project will be a simple Text User Interface. I used Ncurses for my monitor program, but I don't like the fact that it is pretty complex to compile on Windows with MinGW and GPS installed parallel. Also, it seems a bit slow to me with regard to output, so I thought this would be a good pet project to take the next step with Ada. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com