Re: Ada Idioms Progress Preview

[James Rogers <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> To me this is not a list of idioms, but rather a tutorial of Ada
> features. That may have its own merits, but a list of real idioms
> would be separately useful.
> 
> If there is a feature X in Ada that does Y, then saying that X is
> an idiom for Y is not very helpful. To me an idiom is a combination
> of features that is not so obvious, e.g. the following for labeling
> branches of cases

I have been struggling with just this issue. 

To a person learning Ada, but familiar with other languages, the
things you call a "feature" will appear to be an idiom. 

Having looked up the word "idiom" in "The American Heritage
Dictionary", I get the following definitions:

1. A speech form or expression of a given language that is peculiar
to itself grammatically or that cannot be understood from the
individual meanings of its elements.
2. The specific grammatical, syntactic, and structural character of
a given language.
3. A regional speech or dialect.
4. A specialized vocabulary used by a group of people; jargon.
5. A style of artistic expression characteristic of a given
individual, school, period, or medium.

Clearly none of these are exactly what I am looking for. The word
is used somewhat differently in a programming language context.
I do see that the word idiom can be used both generally, and for
specialized groups. It appears that you understand an idiom to be
more specialized than definition 2 above.

I have been working through a way to present both the general and the
specialized idioms for Ada. I have started with the general idioms.
I do want to include more specialized idioms such as those mentioned
by Robert Dewar and Ehud Lamm. The big challenge is to organize the
document so that readers can find the idioms in which they are
interested.

Please keep suggesting idioms. I am sure that I have not personally
used all Ada idioms. 

Jim Rogers
Colorado Springs, Colorado USA