Re: real numbers in ADA

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <794851577snz@linkmsd.com>, David Arno <davea@linkmsd.com> wrote:
>
>The LRM is *the* book for any Ada related subject - assumming you can
>understand it of course, as it is a nightmare to read :-(

As language standards go, Ada is about as good as I've ever seen, and I've
seen a lot. _All_ language standards are good reference docs, but you
can't use them as textbooks; they are very legalistic in nature.

The Ada 95 and Ada 83 _Rationale_ documents, on the other hand, make
good reading; they are discursive and give lots of good examples and
insight into why features were desugned as they were. And of course, in
the Ada case, these documents are all free on the net.

Anyone who'd characterize the Ada LRM _per se_ as a "nightmare" to read,
probably hasn't read the others. Most folks haven't read language standards,
because they are expensive and, by nature, hard to read.

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
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One, two, three ways an underdog: Ada fan, Mac fan, Old Liberal Democrat
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Ada on the WWW: http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/ or http://info.acm.org/sigada/
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