Re: New Ada Student

Re: New Ada Student

[Marin David Condic]

David Michaels wrote:

> Hi I am a brand new Ada student, I'm enrolled in a computer science
> course at a univ cinci, I'm takeing Ada as a elective so be kind with
> any flames. This is my first post to this news group. And I promise I
> won't post again unless its urgent.

We're pretty friendly here to students so long as they don't ask anyone to
do their homework assignments for them. Feel free to ask even dumb questions
- althought occasionally someone might torch you for failing to make some
effort to look in the book.

There are lots of resources to help you out. A good starting place is
http://www.Adapower.com/ and you may also want to look at my web page:
http://www.mcondic.com/ where I have some links and useful chunks of source
code.

Good luck with it!

MDC
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Re: New Ada Student

[Geoffrey Gar-Wah Yu]

David Michaels <free08@my-deja.com> writes:

>Hi I am a brand new Ada student, I'm enrolled in a computer science
>course at a univ cinci, I'm takeing Ada as a elective so be kind with
>any flames. This is my first post to this news group. And I promise I
>won't post again unless its urgent.

>My teacher is instucting using Feldman/Koffman Ada 95 the software he is
>using is gnat3.11p and the Adaguide i'm not sure if I spelled that write
>it's the ide for windows, he is running windows 98

>I run solaris x86 and I'm using gnat3.12p and grasp.

>Does anyone have any opinions as to whether or not my programs will
>compile and link on the schools windows machines? I am concerned about
>compatibility between platforms and versions.

The Ada language was developed so that when any 'language' changes were
finalised and published then all future compilers/parsers/interpreters..
anything to do with the Ada language had to be compliant. Unlike languages
like C or C++ different companies added there own flavour to the language
and so sometimes it was uncertain to get 100% platform compatabible. However
I'm not sure how accurate each Ada compiler has to be to the language...
but there are very strict standards to keep the language clean from
varying current versions.

I find that Ada was pretty solid on the PC and UNIX platforms... I used
them at uni. I mean I can't remember if I had any troubles recompiling
source from PC to UNIX and vice versa without no platform dependent errors...

So I think it should be ok... And since you are using AdaGIDE that uses
GNAT... it is pretty solid on the PC and UNIX platforms. So I think you
shouldn't have many problems transporting your code from your Solaris
to Windows platform...

Hope this helps

Geoffrey
--
                 / ||             GEOFFREY YU             || \
================+  ||         ggwy@cs.rmit.edu.au         ||  +=================
----------------+  || RMIT CS Dept Australia Casual Staff ||  +-----------------
                 \ || http://yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ggwy || /
================================================================================
** Semester 2, 2000: CS109 Lab - CS280 Tutor & Lab - CS504 Tutor & Lab

Re: New Ada Student

[Charles Hixson]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2835 bytes --]

He's not running on Win32, but on Solaris.  I don't think he can use AdaGide.  He
said he was using Grasp.  That's been around the barn a few times too, however.  If
he's using jGrasp then he can even print (one of standard Grasp's real defects).
Pity they felt that they needed to switch to Java though.  Now it's so slow that I
keep both versions around.  Grasp to work in, and jGrasp to print out the results.

Geoffrey Gar-Wah Yu wrote:

> David Michaels <free08@my-deja.com> writes:
>
> >Hi I am a brand new Ada student, I'm enrolled in a computer science
> >course at a univ cinci, I'm takeing Ada as a elective so be kind with
> >any flames. This is my first post to this news group. And I promise I
> >won't post again unless its urgent.
>
> >My teacher is instucting using Feldman/Koffman Ada 95 the software he is
> >using is gnat3.11p and the Adaguide i'm not sure if I spelled that write
> >it's the ide for windows, he is running windows 98
>
> >I run solaris x86 and I'm using gnat3.12p and grasp.
>
> >Does anyone have any opinions as to whether or not my programs will
> >compile and link on the schools windows machines? I am concerned about
> >compatibility between platforms and versions.
>
> The Ada language was developed so that when any 'language' changes were
> finalised and published then all future compilers/parsers/interpreters..
> anything to do with the Ada language had to be compliant. Unlike languages
> like C or C++ different companies added there own flavour to the language
> and so sometimes it was uncertain to get 100% platform compatabible. However
> I'm not sure how accurate each Ada compiler has to be to the language...
> but there are very strict standards to keep the language clean from
> varying current versions.
>
> I find that Ada was pretty solid on the PC and UNIX platforms... I used
> them at uni. I mean I can't remember if I had any troubles recompiling
> source from PC to UNIX and vice versa without no platform dependent errors...
>
> So I think it should be ok... And since you are using AdaGIDE that uses
> GNAT... it is pretty solid on the PC and UNIX platforms. So I think you
> shouldn't have many problems transporting your code from your Solaris
> to Windows platform...
>
> Hope this helps
>
> Geoffrey
> --
>                  / ||             GEOFFREY YU             || \
> ================+  ||         ggwy@cs.rmit.edu.au         ||  +=================
> ----------------+  || RMIT CS Dept Australia Casual Staff ||  +-----------------
>                  \ || http://yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ggwy || /
> ================================================================================
> ** Semester 2, 2000: CS109 Lab - CS280 Tutor & Lab - CS504 Tutor & Lab

-- (c) Charles Hixson
--  Addition of advertisements or hyperlinks to products specifically prohibited


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Re: New Ada Student

[lbarowski]

In article <39DE0682.622F5AE9@earthlink.net>,
  Charles Hixson <charleshixsn@earthlink.net> wrote:
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
> --------------2D4A1DB80ED348E2C1D50EDE
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> He's not running on Win32, but on Solaris.  I don't think he can use
AdaGide.  He
> said he was using Grasp.  That's been around the barn a few times too,
however.  If
> he's using jGrasp then he can even print (one of standard Grasp's real
defects).
> Pity they felt that they needed to switch to Java though.  Now it's so
slow that I
> keep both versions around.  Grasp to work in, and jGrasp to print out
the results.
>


    UNIX GRASP has full printing capability as long as you can
print PostScript, which if you are using UNIX/Linux you almost
certainly can.

    Also in our defense, we did need to switch to Java. After some
initial start up overhead, we're making much more progress
this way, plus we can eventually port to Mac, etc with little work.
jGRASP is usable on a P300, which is slow by today's standards, and
speed is not a concern at all on a P3-550 or better. On SPARCs the
performance is not so good, but that hardware will catch up
eventually - display/graphics speed is the main problem.


-Larry



> Geoffrey Gar-Wah Yu wrote:
>
> > David Michaels <free08@my-deja.com> writes:
> >
> > >Hi I am a brand new Ada student, I'm enrolled in a computer science
> > >course at a univ cinci, I'm takeing Ada as a elective so be kind
with
> > >any flames. This is my first post to this news group. And I promise
I
> > >won't post again unless its urgent.
> >
> > >My teacher is instucting using Feldman/Koffman Ada 95 the software
he is
> > >using is gnat3.11p and the Adaguide i'm not sure if I spelled that
write
> > >it's the ide for windows, he is running windows 98
> >
> > >I run solaris x86 and I'm using gnat3.12p and grasp.
> >
> > >Does anyone have any opinions as to whether or not my programs will
> > >compile and link on the schools windows machines? I am concerned
about
> > >compatibility between platforms and versions.
> >
> > The Ada language was developed so that when any 'language' changes
were
> > finalised and published then all future
compilers/parsers/interpreters..
> > anything to do with the Ada language had to be compliant. Unlike
languages
> > like C or C++ different companies added there own flavour to the
language
> > and so sometimes it was uncertain to get 100% platform compatabible.
However
> > I'm not sure how accurate each Ada compiler has to be to the
language...
> > but there are very strict standards to keep the language clean from
> > varying current versions.
> >
> > I find that Ada was pretty solid on the PC and UNIX platforms... I
used
> > them at uni. I mean I can't remember if I had any troubles
recompiling
> > source from PC to UNIX and vice versa without no platform dependent
errors...
> >
> > So I think it should be ok... And since you are using AdaGIDE that
uses
> > GNAT... it is pretty solid on the PC and UNIX platforms. So I think
you
> > shouldn't have many problems transporting your code from your
Solaris
> > to Windows platform...
> >
> > Hope this helps
> >
> > Geoffrey
> > --
> >                  / ||             GEOFFREY YU             || \
> > ================+  ||         ggwy@cs.rmit.edu.au         ||
+=================
> > ----------------+  || RMIT CS Dept Australia Casual Staff ||
+-----------------
> >                  \ || http://yallara.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ggwy || /
> >
========================================================================
========
> > ** Semester 2, 2000: CS109 Lab - CS280 Tutor & Lab - CS504 Tutor &
Lab
>
> -- (c) Charles Hixson
> --  Addition of advertisements or hyperlinks to products specifically
prohibited
>
> --------------2D4A1DB80ED348E2C1D50EDE
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> --------------2D4A1DB80ED348E2C1D50EDE--
>
>


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Re: New Ada Student

[tmoran]

> > There are, of course, some differences between gnat 3.11p and
> > 3.12p, but as a new Ada student you probably won't run into them.
>
> I think the sentence above is the important part of the post. Ada has a
> fairly rigid standard which all compilers (including Gnat) adhere to. No
> compiler can make fundamental changes in the language that they accept
> from version to version, like you may be accustomed to seeing with
  I didn't mean to suggest that either 3.11 or 3.12 make fundamental
changes in the language.  I meant that 3.12 probably fixed some bugs
in 3.11, ie, there exist pieces of source code handled differently by
the two versions.  The existence of 3.13 suggests that 3.12 was also
found to imperfect.  But the kinds of bugs even in old 3.11 are
probably in sufficiently unusual and obscure places that a new Ada
student shouldn't run into them.  The Ada world differs from the
K&R C/Ansi C/Borland C++/Microsoft C++ n.nn/C# world.

  Since I often send Claw (6 MB source) through different versions of
Gnat, and other compilers, I'm rather acutely aware of even some
fairly obscure bugs in, ie differences between, compilers.  There are
also a few obscure things (how you get the instance handle of the app
from the run-time-system, for instance), where the compilers differ
even though the hardware and OS (MS Windows) is the same.  Again, a
new Ada student is unlikely to even notice these kinds of things.

Re: New Ada Student

[Preben Randhol]

On Sat, 23 Sep 2000 17:49:18 GMT, tmoran@bix.com wrote:
>the two versions.  The existence of 3.13 suggests that 3.12 was also
>found to imperfect.  But the kinds of bugs even in old 3.11 are

Doesn't have to be bugfixes to justify a new version though. Compiler
optimisation is also possible and being done :-)


-- 
Preben Randhol - Ph.D student - http://www.pvv.org/~randhol/
"i too once thought that when proved wrong that i lost somehow"
                               - i was hoping, alanis morisette