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From: pontius@twonky.btv.ibm.com (Dale Pontius)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: GNAT newbie
Date: 27 Mar 1995 13:27:41 -0500
Organization: IBM Technology Products
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <3l702t$kcn@twonky.btv.ibm.com>
Reply-To: pontius@vnet.ibm.com
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Date: 1995-03-27T13:27:41-05:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Hello,

I'm an old Modula-2 bigot, and not seeing much life continuing there,
so I'm looking into other ways to avoid the dread C/C++.

My job is not programming, but I find it handy to code up stuff from
time to time. These pieces of code generally get years of use by a
small group of people. I have Pascal and Modula-2 code that I've gone
back into as much as five years later and extended or adapted without
terrible problems. I value readability and self-documentation.

Times are kind of tight all over these days, and in the past few
years I've made the move to new platforms, AIX/6000 and OS/2 Warp.
I'm now in a catch-22 situation: since I'm not a programmer, I can't
readily go out and buy an expensive compiler, but I can easily get
an 'internal use' copy C++. If I were a programmer I might be able to
buy a compiler, but I would probably be 'encouraged' to buy C++ or
use the same 'internal use' compiler.

As things have it, I'm looking at Ada95, and GNAT in particular. I
don't like the size of the Ada language, but am preparing to try and
use a reasonable subset. I do have a few questions:

1: Is there some sort of library overview? I see a bunch of .ads
   files, and know that they're the equivalent of a .def file in
   Modula-2, but the names aren't that informative without a roadmap.

2: Does Ada normally use pass-by-value or pass-by-reference? I've
   looked at some of the examples and have seen parameters marked
   with 'in out', which obviously must be by-reference, but how
   about the normal case. I'm wondering about side effects and
   performance.

3: Is there some sort of more concise description than the 500 page
   non-annotated postscript document? I realize it may be more vague,
   but I plan to stick to a more concrete subset of the language, at
   least to start with.

4: Any other 'newbie advice'?

5: Anyone want any specific 'newbie perspectives'? You've already
   gotten some.

Please don't flame me because of my address. I'm a lowly DRAM designer,
and have nothing to do with the company I work for not backing Ada.

Thanks,
Dale Pontius
(NOT speaking for IBM)