Re: Improving the first contact with Ada

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

On 06.07.10 14:57, Ludovic Brenta wrote:

> The Ada Programming wikibook[1] is the closest thing to such a
> tutorial; it is still not perfect, of course. The Ada Information
> Clearinghouse[2] is the closest thing to a central hub for more
> general information (other books, standards, success stories, etc.)

People seem to be loosing the ability to use a personal computing
device without guidance from another.
GNAT, ObjectAda, AppletMagic, and I bet the other compilers, too,
ship with tutorial texts on how to get started with your Ada
tools.  I found them quite good. What do you think?

If the introductions are good, and if they address programmers
who know the basics of computers and of programming, then in
order to give these modern programmers a little help, maybe we
should just add an HTML button to Ada pages that when pressed
presents a dialog.
The dialog lets the user navigate to the introduction
which, surprise, is installed on his or her own machine, too!
If they select the compiler they have,
the dialog will show the name of a file from which to begin
the tutorial. The file has a default location. If it is not found
in its default location, the name is known and is presented in
the dialog.  The computer can then look for it using the indexes
that modern computers update all the time.