* Re: Ada - Where to get programs and books (long)
1994-09-21 20:55 Ada - Where to get programs and books GROSZ. STEVE
@ 1994-09-22 16:23 ` Michael Feldman
1994-09-22 17:13 ` David Weller
[not found] ` <35sdvl$l36@starbase.neosoft.com>
0 siblings, 2 replies; 5+ messages in thread
From: Michael Feldman @ 1994-09-22 16:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
An Annotated Sampling of Ada-Oriented Textbooks
September 1994
Michael B. Feldman
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
(202) 994-5919 (voice)
(202) 994-0227 (fax)
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu
(with contributions from Jack Beidler, Duane Jarc, Suzanne Pawlan Levy,
and Mathew Lodge, as indicated by their initials following their reviews)
As chair of the SIGAda Education Working Group, and a denizen of the
Internet newsgroups, I am often asked to give references for "Ada
textbooks." This list responds to these many queries.
The textbooks in the Group 1 are written especially for students without
programming experience, who are learning Ada as their first language.
Most of these can also cover at least part of a typical CS2-level
course. The books in Group 2 use Ada as their language of
discourse but are "subject-oriented:" data structures, file structures,
compilers, comparative languages. The remaining books in Group 3 are
either "Ada books" focusing on the language features or more general
books that use Ada, at least in part, but do not fit obviously into a
standard curriculum "pigeonhole."
I invite you to add to the list. Please write your annotated entry in
the form I have used here and write or e-mail it to me. I will include
it in my next version and credit you as a co-compiler of the list.
Disclaimers: I wrote two of the texts listed here; I hope the
annotations are impartial enough. And any annotated bibliography is
selective and opinionated. Your mileage may vary.
Group 1: Books Suitable for a First Course in Programming
Bover, D.C.C., K.J. Maciunas, and M.J. Oudshoorn.
Ada: A First Course in Programming and Software Engineering.
Addison-Wesley, 1992.
This work is, to our knowledge, the first Ada book to emerge from
Australia, from a group of authors with much collective experience in
teaching Ada to first-year students. A number of interesting examples
are presented, for example, an Othello game. The book is full of gentle
humor, a definite advantage in a world of dry and serious texts. In the
book's favor is the large number of complete programs. On the other
hand, it is rather "European" in its terseness; American teachers may
miss the pedagogical apparatus and "hand-holding" typically found in
today's CS1 books. Generic units are hardly mentioned.
Culwin, F. Ada: a Developmental Approach.
Prentice-Hall, 1992.
This work introduces Ada along with a good first-year approach to
software development methodology. Much attention is paid to program
design, documentation, and testing. Enough material is present in data
structures and algorithm analysis is present to carry a CS2 course. A
drawback of the book is that the first third is quite "Pascal-like" in
its presentation order: procedures, including nested ones, are presented
rather early, and packages are deferred until nearly the middle of the
book. This is certainly not a fatal flaw, but it will frustrate teachers
wishing a more package-oriented presentation. The programs and solutions
are apparently available from the author.
Dale, N., D. Weems, and J. McCormick.
Programming and Problem Solving with Ada. D. C. Heath, 1994.
This book is inspired by Dale and Weems' very successful Introduction to
Pascal and Structured Design, but it is not simply an Ada version. Ada's
more advanced capabilities such as exceptions, packages and generic units
are included in this text. In addition, more than half of the material is
completely new, and the order of the topics is signficantly different. It
also has more of a software engineering focus than the Pascal version. The
only Ada topics not included in this text are tasks and access types.
Procedures and packages are introduced early. Each chapter includes case
studies, testing and debugging hints and excellent non-programming exercises
and programming problems. The text comes with a program disk containing all
the programs given in the book. In addition, a validated Meridian Ada
compiler with complete documentation is available at low cost to students
using this book. (S. P. L.)
DeLillo, N. J.
A First Course in Computer Science with Ada.
Irwin, 1993.
This book is a first in the Ada literature: a version comes with an
Ada compiler, the AETech-IntegrAda version of Janus Ada. Author, publisher,
and software supplier are to be commended for their courage in this.
The book itself covers all the usual CS1 topics. In my opinion, the order
of presentation is a bit too Pascal-like, with functions and procedures
introduced in Chapter 5 (of 15) and no sign of packages (other than Text_IO)
until Chapter 10. Unconstrained arrays and generics are, however, done
nicely for this level, and Chapter 13 is entirely devoted to a single
nontrivial case study, a statistical package. I wish there were more
complete programs in the early chapters, to put the (otherwise good)
discussion of control and data structures in better context.
Feldman, M.B., and E.B. Koffman.
Ada: Problem Solving and Program Design.
Addison-Wesley, 1991.
This work combines the successful material from Koffman's CS1 pedagogy
with a software-engineering-oriented Ada presentation order. Packages
are introduced early and emphasized heavily; chapters on abstract data
types, unconstrained arrays, generics, recursion, and dynamic data
structures appear later. The last five chapters, combined with some
language-independent algorithm theory, can serve as the basis of a CS2
course. A diskette with all the fully-worked packages and examples
(about 180) is included; the instructor's manual contains a diskette
with project solutions.
Savitch, W.J. and C.G. Petersen.
Ada: an Introduction to the Art and Science of Programming.
Benjamin/Cummings, 1992.
This is a straightforward adaptation of the well-known Savitch Pascal
books. Ada is introduced in a Pascal-like order, with subtypes and
packages introduced halfway through the book. This is purely a CS1 book.
The final chapter covers dynamic data structures. There is minimal coverage
of unconstrained array types; generics are introduced at the halfway
point to explain Text_IO, then continued only in the final chapter. The
authors intended this book to provide a painless transition to Ada for
teachers of Pascal; one wishes they had taken advantage of the chance to
show some of the interesting Ada concepts as well. Program examples from
the text are available on disk, but only as part of the instructor's
manual; a solutions disk is available for a fee from the authors.
Skansholm, J. Ada from the Beginning. (2nd ed.)
Addison Wesley, 1994.
This book was one of the first to use Ada with CS1-style pedagogy.
There are excellent sections on the idiosyncracies of interactive I/O (a
problem in all languages), and a sufficient number of fully-worked
examples to satisfy students. Generics, linked lists and recursion are
covered at the end; there is no tasking coverage, but one would not
expect this at CS1-level. A very interesting addition is the new
Chapter 14, in which OOP in both Ada 83 and Ada 94 is discussed.
This is an especially lucid explanation of OOP in Ada, and makes a real
contribution because it doesn't just discuss tagged types as a "feature"
of Ada 94, but shows very nicely what is possible in Ada 83 (instead
of just what is _not_ possible), and shows how Ada 94 adds functionality.
Smith, James F., and Thomas S. Frank
Introduction to Programming Concepts and Methods with Ada
McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994
This is a well written and easy to use text. The book takes a spiraled
approach to CS 1. The authors do an excellent job integrating Ada into
the book. They take a very direct approach, especially with an early
introduction to the package concept and the traditional Text_IO package.
Faculty who have taught CS 1 with Pascal should like this book. Instead
of making a big fanfare about Ada features, they simply introduce them
as good support for software development concepts. The authors have
carefully chosen the Ada topics they decided to cover in this book in
order to strike a balance between staying true to the CS 1 course while
presenting enough of the programming language. If you teach CS 1 you
might at least want to get a copy of this text just to look at two
chapters, Chapter 7 and Chapter 14. Seven covers program correctness and
run-time event (exception handling) and fourteen is a beautiful presentation
and example of generic packaging. Both presentations are done in an
appropriate manner for CS 1. (J. B.)
Volper, D., and M. Katz. Introduction to Programming Using Ada.
Prentice-Hall, 1990.
This book uses a heavily "spiraled" approach to Ada, and is designed
for a 2-semester course, covering nearly all of Ada eventually. There
are lots of fully-coded examples, and good pedagogical sections on
testing, coding style, etc. If you like spiraling, you'll like this. The
down side is that you can't find all you need on a given subject in one
place. It's at the other end of the scale from the "Ada books" that
follow the Ada Language Reference Manual (LRM) order.
Group 2: Other Books Intended for Undergraduate Courses
Ben-Ari, M. Principles of Concurrent and Distributed Programming.
Prentice-Hall 1990. (OS/concurrency)
In my opinion, this is the best introduction to concurrency on the
market. Ada notation is used for everything, but the focus is on
concurrency and not on Ada constructs per se. I liked the CoPascal
notation of the first edition better, but this book is still great. A
software disk is promised in the preface; I had to work quite hard to
get it from the publisher, which finally had to express-ship it from
England. The software comes with a tiny Ada-ish interpreter, complete
with Pascal source code, adapted from Wirth's Pascal/S via CoPascal.
There are also some real Ada programs, most of which I've tested and
found correct and portable.
Feldman, M.B. Data Structures with Ada.
Addison Wesley, 1993.
(CS2/data structures)
This book is a reasonable approximation to a modern CS2 book: "big O"
analysis, linked lists, queues and stacks, graphs, trees, hash methods,
and sorting, are all covered. The Ada is a bit old-fashioned, especially
the lack of generics; the book was published before compilers could
handle generics. The packages and other programs are available free from
the author. The book is currently under revision with Addison-Wesley and
should appear in 1995.
Fischer, C., and R. LeBlanc. Crafting a Compiler.
Benjamin Cummings, 1988. (compilers)
This book uses Ada as its language of discourse and Ada/CS, a usefully
large Ada subset, as the language being compiled. If you can get the
"plain Pascal" tool software by ftp from the authors, you'll have a good
translator-writing toolset. Skip the Turbo Pascal diskette version,
which is missing too many pieces to be useful. I've used the book since
it came out with both undergrad and graduate compiler courses; it
embodies a good blend of theory and "how it's really done" coding.
Students like it. The authors have recently published a second version,
which uses C as its coding language but retains Ada/CS as the language
being compiled.
Hillam, Bruce. Introduction to Abstract Data Types Using Ada.
Prentice-Hall, 1994. (data structures)
This is a very readable treatment of data structures presented using Ada
that makes good use of Ada features such as generics. It contain many
complete programs and packages. Unfortunately, obvious syntax errors make
it apparent that not all examples have been compiled. The level of
presentation is somewhere between an elementary, CS 2, data structures
course and an advanced, CS 7, course. A subset of first eleven chapters
provide the appropriate topics for a CS 2 course, but not the pedagogy
necessary for a course at that level. (D. J.)
Lomuto, N. Problem-Solving Methods with Examples in Ada.
Prentice-Hall, 1987.(algorithms)
Inspired by Polya's classic How to Solve It, this book can make a nice
addition to an Ada-oriented algorithms course. It makes too many
assumptions about students' programming background to use as a CS1 book,
and doesn't teach enough Ada to be an "Ada book." But it makes nice
reading for students sophisticated enough to handle it. I'd classify it
as similar to Bentley's Programming Pearls.
Miller, N.E. and C.G. Petersen. File Structures with Ada.
Benjamin/Cummings, 1990. (file structures)
Designed for a straightforward ACM-curriculum file structures course,
this book succeeds at what it does. There are good discussions of ISAM
and B-tree organizations. The software can be purchased a low cost from
the authors; it seems to approximate in Ada all those C-based file
packages advertised in programmer-oriented trade publications.
Schneider, G.M., and S.C. Bruell.
Concepts in Data Structures and Software Development (with Ada
Supplement by P. Texel).
West, 1991. (CS2/data structures)
This work is not, strictly speaking, an Ada book; rather, it is a
solid, language-independent approach to modern CS2. The language of
discourse in the book is a Pascal-like ADT language rather like Modula-2
in style; some examples are coded in legal Pascal. The Ada supplement
makes it usable in an Ada-based course, but the supplement is rather too
terse (100 pages of large type) for my taste, and insufficiently well
keyed to the book chapters. The supplement's effectiveness would be
greatly enhanced by full translations to Ada of a large number of the
book's examples.
Sebesta, R.W. Concepts of Programming Languages (2nd ed.).
Benjamin Cummings, 1993. (comparative languages)
If you've been around for a while, you might remember the late Mark
Elson's 1975 book by the same title. This is similar: a concept-by-
concept presentation, with -- in each chapter -- examples taken from
several languages. I include this work in an "Ada list" because I like its
nice, impartial coverage of Ada. I especially like the chapters on
abstraction and exception handling. The book covers -- comparatively,
of course -- most of the lanuages you'd like to see, including C, C++,
Lisp, Smalltalk, etc., with nice historical chapters as well. The book
is readable; my students like it. Our undergraduate and graduate courses
both use it as a base text.
Weiss, M.A.
Data Structures and Algorithms in Ada.
Benjamin/Cummings, 1993.
I think this book reaches its intended market -- data structures courses
(CS7) -- rather well with Ada. There's a good mixture of theory and practice
(ADT design, for example), and coverage of new topics like amortized algorithm
analysis and splay trees. A book at this level should not pay too much
attention to teaching a language; rather it should make good use of its
language of discourse. The Ada version does not attempt to teach either the
language or Ada-style software engineering, but shows good understanding of
the language, uses generic packages quite well and focuses on the theory of
algorithms, as a book at this level should. This is the first, and so far
the only, text in Ada for this course.
Group 3: A Selection of Other Ada-Related Books
Barnes, J.
Programming in Ada. (4th edition)
Addison-Wesley, 1994.
Barnes' work has been one of the most popular "Ada books." Some students
find it hard to see how the pieces fit together from Barnes' often
fragmentary examples; it is difficult to find complete, fully-worked out,
compilable programs. This just-out fourth edition has a 100-page summary of
Ada 9X.
Booch, G. Object-Oriented Design, with Applications.
Benjamin Cummings, 1991.
This is a good comparative introduction to the "object-oriented (OO)"
concept. The first half gives a balanced presentation of the issues in
OO Design; the second half gives nontrivial examples from Ada,
Smalltalk, C++, CLOS, and Object Pascal. The author tries to sort out
the difference between object-based (weak inheritance, like Ada) and
object-oriented (like C++) languages. My only real complaint is that
Booch should have worked out at least some of his case studies using
several different languages, to highlight the similarities and
differences in the language structures. As it is, each case study is
done in only a single language. The good news is that the book is
remarkably free of the hyperbolic claims one sometimes finds in the OO
literature. I think this book could be used successfully in a second-
level comparative languages course.
Booch, G. Software Components with Ada.
Benjamin Cummings, 1987.
This work is an encyclopedic presentation of data structure packages
from Booch's OOD point of view. It is great for those who love
taxonomies. It's not for the faint-hearted, because the volume of
material can be overwhelming. It could serve as a text for an advanced
data structures course, but it's thin in "big O" analysis and other
algorithm-theory matters. The book is keyed to the (purchasable) Booch
Components.
Booch, G. and D. Bryan
Software Engineering with Ada. (3rd edition)
Benjamin/Cummings 1994.
Another of the classical "Ada books." Introduces Booch's OOD ideas. Not
for use to introduce Ada to novices, in my opinion; there are some nice
fully-worked case studies but they begin too far into the book, after long
sections on design, philosophy, and language elements. The earlier chapters
contain too much fragmentary code, a common flaw in books that follow the LRM
order. The third edition contains an appendix describing Ada 9X.
Bryan, D.L., and G.O. Mendal. Exploring Ada, Volumes 1.and 2.
Prentice-Hall, 1990 and 1992 respectively.
This is an excellent study of some of the interesting nooks and
crannies of Ada; it sometimes gets tricky and "language-lawyerly."
Volume 2 takes up tasking, generics, exceptions, derived types, scope
and visibility; Volume 1 covers everything else. The programs are short
and narrowly focused on specific language issues. If you like Bryan's
"Dear Ada" column in Ada Letters, you'll like this book. It is certainly
not a book for beginners, but great fun for those who know Ada already
and wish to explore.
Burns, A. Concurrent Programming in Ada.
Cambridge University Press, 1985.
I used this book for years in my concurrency course. It's roughly
equivalent to Gehani's book, but its age is showing. Cambridge Press is
not always easy to get books from, especially in the US.
Burns, Alan and Wellings, Andy
Real Time Systems and their Programming Languages
Addison-Wesley 1990. (ISBN 0-201-17529-0)
This is an excellent and unique book. Basic concepts and terminology are
explained before moving on to explain the major aspects of real time design.
"Real world" examples are presented in Ada, Modula-2 and occam 2, though
Ada is clearly the authors' language of choice and gets the most coverage.
Topics covered include reliability and fault tolerance, concurrency,
synchronisation, scheduling, message passing, atomic transactions, resource
control, distributed systems and low-level device control. Efficiency is not
neglected, and Ada support here is particularly strong with detail on the
CIFO package. Several case studies are also presented. The only failing of
the book is that it needs updating to cover Ada 9x and its real-time annex,
Modula-3 etc. However, the basic concepts that the authors convey so clearly
are independent of implementation language. (M. L.)
Cohen, N. Ada as a Second Language.
McGraw Hill, 1986.
This book is a quite comprehensive exploration of Ada which
follows the LRM in its presentation order. My graduate students like it
because it is more detailed and complete than alternative texts. It's an
excellent book for students who know their languages and want to study
all of Ada. There are good discussions of "why's and wherefore's" and
many long, fully-worked examples.
Gauthier, M. Ada: Un Apprentissage (in French).
Dunod, 1989.
I found this an especially interesting, almost philosophical approach
to Ada. The first section presents Ada in the context of more general
laguage principles: types, genericity, reusability. The second section
introduces testing and documentation concerns, as well as tasking; the
third considers generics and variant records in the more general context
of polymorphism. For mature Ada students in the French-speaking world,
and others who can follow technical French, this book can serve as a
different slant on the conventional presentations of the language. An
English translation would be a real contribution to the Ada literature.
Gehani, N. Ada: an Advanced Introduction (2nd edition).
Prentice-Hall, 1989.
I've always liked Gehani's literate writing style; he knows his
languages and treats Ada in an interesting, mature, and balanced
fashion. This book comes with a diskette sealed in the back of the book,
which is advantageous because the book has numerous nontrivial, fully-
worked examples.
Gehani, N. Ada: Concurrent Programming (2nd edition).
Silicon Press, 1991.
This is a less formal, more Ada-oriented presentation of concurrency
than the Ben-Ari work. I use both books in my concurrency course; its
real strength is the large number of nontrivial, fully worked examples.
Gehani offers a nice critique of the tasking model from the point of
view of an OS person. The preface promises the availability of a
software disk from the publisher.
Naiditch, D.J. Rendezvous with Ada
New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1989.
A nice, relatively quick survey of the language for experienced
programmers. Warning: there are not too many complete programs here, at
least at the beginning. But overall, this is a good choice, less overwhelming
than, say, Cohen, for "learning the language" quickly.
Nyberg, K. (editor) The Annotated Ada Reference Manual.(2nd edition)
Grebyn Corporation, 1991.
This is the definitive work on Ada legalities, because it presents not
only the full text of the LRM but also the official Ada Interpretations
as prepared by the Ada Rapporteur Group of Working Group 9 of the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and approved by
that organization. These commentaries, interleaved with the LRM text,
are promulgated by the Ada Joint Program Office, the American National
Standards Institute (ANSI) agent for Ada, in the Ada Compiler Validation
Suite (ACVC). They are thus binding upon compiler developers. I recommend
this book as an essential volume in the library of every serious Ada
enthusiast.
Shumate, K. Understanding Ada. (2nd edition)
John Wiley, 1989.
This would make a CS1 book if it included more overall pedagogy,
independent of language constructs. Otherwise it is a nice introduction
to Ada in fairly gentle steps. Lots of completely worked examples, right
from the start. Doesn't follow the LRM order, which is great.
Watt, D.A., B.A. Wichmann, and W. Findlay. Ada Language and Methodology.
Prentice-Hall, 1987.
This work presents some interesting programming projects, and the
coverage of design and testing--at the level of a first-year student--is
quite good. The first third of the book concentrates heavily on
classical control and data structures, leaving exceptions, packages and
even procedures until the "programming in the large" material in the
second third. CS2 teachers will find too little concentration on
algorithm analysis. On the other hand, tasking and machine-dependent
programming are covered. Like the Shumate work, this book would make a
suitable introduction to Ada for students with a semester or so of
programming experience; it "jumps in" too quickly to satisfy the needs
of neophytes and is not well-tailored to CS1 or CS2 needs.
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