Re: New to ada, a few questions

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

Stephane Jolicoeur wrote:

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> 
> Hello,
> I am a strong python programmer that is looking for a compiled language to
> complement my tool chest. I tried C but those pointers are an annoyance, I
> tried C++ but there to the pointers and it's OO weirdness kicked in. Then  I
> stumbled on an Ada tutorial, I dislike the Pascal-like coding style but
> there seems to be no pointer and it can be compiled to native byte code !
>  I would like to know, what good books are there for learning ada ( some
> sort of tutorial/reference book). How "fast" is compiled Ada code by this I
> mean is it like C/C++ or more like Java? I read that it is possible to
> interface Ada with C? How is this done? Can I use say stdio.h in an Ada
> program? How about interfacing with C++ or objective C? Are there any GUI
> librairies (windows, BSD, Mac OS X)? Has any Ada compiler been made to
> compile code for microcontrollers ( PIC, 68hc11, etc )? How does the
> threading work? I think this should suffice for a first post.
> 


First the short answer: visit www.adapower.com for Ada online books and
tutorials.

More detailed answers follow:

* Ada code is as fast as C or C++ code.


* Ada provides calling conventions and several useful conversions
   for calling functions compiled in C. You cannot use stdio.h in Ada.
   Ada does not understand C source syntax, and Ada has no standard
   preprocessor.

* Interfacing with C++ or objective C is possible. The simplest way
   is to treat them both as C programs. More complex approaches are
   somewhat compiler specific.

* There are several GUI bindings for Ada. The GtkAda binding is
   very useful and portable.

* Ada is available for embedded systems, but not for 8 bit microcontrollers.

* Ada "threading" works very well. It is actually defined in the more
   general terms of concurrent programming, and is often implemented
   using threads. Compared to Java, Ada's concurrency model is extremely
   robust and sophisticated.

I hope you have pleasant experiences learning Ada.

Jim Rogers