From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,b2d36a382ccbeb18 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!b1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: Maciej Sobczak Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How Would a Hobbyist Learn Ada? Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 14:39:19 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <3a9d4f94-b432-413d-944f-ccfbc2799075@b1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> References: <2ee634c3-0dee-4f02-8b02-c4804efd068f@x19g2000prg.googlegroups.com> <69ea5144-0c58-4a16-91fb-6eefa34646bb@w8g2000prd.googlegroups.com> <4843C58D.6080603@gmail.com> <4843e82c$0$27444$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 85.3.122.45 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1212615559 17422 127.0.0.1 (4 Jun 2008 21:39:19 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 21:39:19 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: b1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com; posting-host=85.3.122.45; posting-account=bMuEOQoAAACUUr_ghL3RBIi5neBZ5w_S User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:572 Date: 2008-06-04T14:39:19-07:00 List-Id: On 3 Cze, 14:02, Ludovic Brenta wrote: > How about others? Were you a hobbyist when you learned Ada? Your question is a bit incomplete and I think I can add something interesting to the discussion. I worked with C++ on systems that have high reliability requirements (control systems, real-time, middleware). I believe I can use this language very effectively and with high confidence, but I felt that there is a margin for improvement in what I do that is not covered in popular sources related to C++. I started to search for a source of good and proven practice, guidelines and engineering approaches and decided that Ada with its mature community is a good candidate to be such a source. Obviously, one needs first to understand Ada to later understand the existing experience of the community, so I started to learn Ada and read whatever I was able to find (Barnes, Burns, Wellings, AARM, Ravenscar, SPARK, etc.), experiment with small projects and annoy you on this group. ;-) Note the path: I did not use Ada at work, I was not a student taking any Ada course, but I also do not consider myself to be a hobbyist. I have decided to inject a good dose of proven software engineering knowledge to my professional work, which is still not directly related to Ada. I believe it was a very good decision and I recommend the same to my fellows. Note also that after three years of learning I still find Ada to be a difficult and complex language and I'm still not confident in my ability to attack complex problems without risking the project's failure (easy projects are... just easy and do not prove anything). Many language corners and lots of compiler (GNAT) problems I have encountered on the way contributed to this perception and I find it rather unfortunate. For this reason I do not think that Ada could become the only language for me, but I see a lot of space for healthy "cohabitation" between various languages. I will certainly keep the link with Ada with an eye for its potential use in both professional and out-of-work projects. -- Maciej Sobczak * www.msobczak.com * www.inspirel.com