Re: Why is Ada a good choice for an ambitious beginner to programming

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

John McCabe wrote:

> I agree with this, but you definitely need to go for one of the books
> written especially for teaching Ada *and* programming together. Norman
> Cohen's book, "Ada as a second language", for example is not designed
> to do that yet is (IMO) one of the best Ada books around. Ada comes
> across as being such a large language that, without a good reference
> guide to what you *need* to know, it could be very easy for a
> beginning programmer to get lost in all the stuff you don't need to
> know.

One reason I wrote Ada Distilled (downloadable from adaic.org
and adapower.com) was to focus on what the newbie needed to
know to get started with Ada without plowing through a massive
amount of prose and long programs.   I believe everyone should
have a copy of Norm Cohen's book if they are serious about Ada,
just as they should have a copy of John Barne's book to fill in a
lot of gaps as well as to see some uniquely conceived examples.

The feedback I have received on Ada Distilled is that it has made
Ada more immediately accessible to at least some experienced
programmers than those more complete and arguably much better
books by Cohen and Barnes.   Everyone learns in a different way.
We can always use more pedagogical material.   I have been
considering doing a book that focuses only on Ada for numerics
applications, one that demonstrates the usage of the many kinds
of numeric attributes in actual programming examples.  Alas,
the press of other commitments has delayed the creation of that
work.

Richard Riehle