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From: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada Book
Date: 27 Jan 1995 21:29:24 -0500
Organization: George Washington University
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Date: 1995-01-27T21:29:24-05:00
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In article <3g7iff$96i@panix.com>, Adam Epstein <adam@panix.com> wrote:
>  Is there a "standard" Ada book similar in form and function to K&R?
>If not, which books come closest?  Which do you recommend?
>
For brevity in bringing experienced programmers into Ada, I like

Naiditch, D.J.  Rendezvous with Ada
New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1989. ISBN 0-471-61654-0
  A nice, relatively quick survey of the language for experienced
programmers. Warning: there are not too many complete programs here, at
least at the beginning. But overall, this is a good choice, less overwhelming
than, say, Cohen, for "learning the language" quickly.


For better or worse, there is no Ada equivalent to K&R. In my opinion,
this is for the better, for two reasons:

(1) K&R was written by the language _designers_, and - like so many
    language books written by the designers, lacks the perspective
    of a more dispassionate author;

(2) K&R was written (originally) before the C standard existed, so
    people had to rely on it not just for a quick intro but for a
    definitive statementon how the language works. This did not happen
    with Ada, as the standard existed before most of the texts did.

Actually, the _real_ equivalent to K&R was, IMHO, Peter Wegner's
text of 1980 (!) which was unfortunately never revised for compatibility
with the 1983 standard and to get rid of the errors. But that book is
a real gem. LONG out of print.

Mike Feldman