Re: Upsurge?

[Thomas <thomas@kenshi.dk>]

Ludovic Brenta wrote:
> Thomas wrote:
>>  I'm just learnig Ada for fun (and so far I'm having lots of fun!)
> 
> VilleWitt wrote:
>> I started to learn Ada 95 up to christmas '07, and I love it.
> 
> It is good to see new people learning out of interest and being vocal
> about it. I went that route in 2003. Out of curiosity, what brought
> you to Ada?
> 
> --
> Ludovic Brenta.


I've been working with PHP/XSLT/Javascript and some CLI scripting for 
years, and while I enjoy working with PHP (I don't much care for 
Javascript, but in the web world it's difficult to avoid), I felt the 
time had come for me to learn a "real" programming language.

I had also become friends with a guy from America, an old school 
programmer with a solid background in languages like Forth, REXX and 
COBOL. We decided to help each other learn something new, and that was 
the final push I needed to get started.

So I set out to find a language we could pick up.

The obvious choices would've been C or perhaps C++, as there's an 
abundance of books/tutorials and communities. All my computers are 
running Slackware (he's on Opensuse), so all the tools needed would've 
been readily at hand. But it just seemed so boring. Everybody and his 
monkey are doing C/C++/C#. There's an air of "been there, done that" 
surrounding those languages, IMHO.

I also thought about Java, but it just seemed like such a pain to get 
even the simplest things going. I may not have given it a real chance, 
but if you're almost bored to death 10 minutes into your first tutorial, 
then it's probably not the right choice. Also my American friend had no 
lost love for Java.

What in the end made me decide on Ada was http://rosettacode.org

I looked at the different tasks and the solutions posted, and Ada just 
intrigued me. I began reading a bit about it, and the more I read, the 
more it seemed like THIS was the language I was going to learn. It was 
massively different from what I was used to working with, so it would 
really put my brain to the test. I suggested it, and my friend agreed, 
and here we are.

So far we've been learning Ada for 3-4 weeks, and we're having a blast! 
It's difficult, it's hard, it's completely different from what we're 
used to. It's just the right thing.

I personally really look forward to the day where I can build a piece of 
software using Ada, just as easy as I can with PHP today. There's quite 
a few things running in my company I would like to do in Ada, and seeing 
as I own the company, I can do as I damn well please.  :D

Regards,
Thomas