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=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1d2825e3bbbe82fb X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Stephen Leake Subject: Re: Textbooks vs. Reference Manuals (was: Need help bad!!!!! (sic)) Date: 1996/10/28 Message-ID: <3274B695.6E35@gsfc.nasa.gov>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 192739484 references: <54u8m2$ko1@news.cdsnet.net> <01bbc402$6c7b01c0$088371a5@dhoossr.iquest.com> <1996Oct27.182712.1@eisner> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center -- Greenbelt, Maryland USA mime-version: 1.0 reply-to: Stephen.Leake@gsfc.nasa.gov newsgroups: comp.lang.ada x-mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; U) Date: 1996-10-28T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Larry Kilgallen wrote: > > n article , dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > > > Second, the RM is not at all the right source to point people to. Instead > > they need to be reading a good text book. Much of the RM is inpenetrable > > even to most of the experts, unless you already understand 95% of what > > you need already. It *is* good for filling in the remaining subtle 5% > > Harrumph :-) > > When I learned Ada, it was from the DEC documentation, which is > mainly their rendition of the Ada 83 reference manual. Two other > volumes in the DEC Ada documentation give some VMS details, but > the only other book I found helpful was the style guide. > > [snip...] > I, too, first learned Ada 83 by reading the LRM. However, I agree with Robert this time. The Ada 95 RM is NOT as good a place to start learning Ada as the Ada 83 RM. The Ada 83 RM tended to discuss all of a topic in one place, with some references to other parts of the manual. In the Ada 95 RM, I'm always flipping pages to find the whole story. Even then, I often don't see it until I read the Rationale. I suspect this is partly a consequence of the more "decoupled" nature of Ada 95 (with child packages and tagged types, the CODE is certainly more spread around!). It is also partly a consequence of being even more rigorous and "legalistic" in style in the Ada 95 RM as opposed to the Ada 83 RM; this is a GOOD THING for the language, but not for novices. On the other hand, the Ada 95 Rationale IS a good place to learn the extensions that Ada 95 makes to Ada 83, at least if you are generally familiar with Ada 83. I don't have experience with entry level tutorials; I assume Lovelace would be a good place to start. > Larry Kilgallen -- - Stephe