Re: Just a question...

[ian@rsd.bel.alcatel.be (Ian Ward)]

lachen_p@photon.epita.fr (patrick lacheny) writes:
   What are the 3 or 4 pieces of advice you would give to
   a C programmer who wants to use Ada ?

Sorry Patrick, my old son, I've got six.

1. If you try to write Ada in the same manner as 'C'
   then you shall get nowhere, write crap code, and then
   give up. Unless I am writing both every day, it
   takes me a week to switch thinking between the two
   respective languages. (Unlike Lisp which, a week after
   writing something, I think "I can think of a better
   of doing that. Hmmm!" so I rewrite it, and then a 
   month later, the same again, and so on.)

2. As a 'C' programmer you shall get infuriated with the
   way it insists things are done. If you let this get
   to you and say "Why can I not do X?" then see point 1.
   If you start doing things the 'Ada' way, you will be 
   pleasantly surprised at sheer speed of the delivered
   code you turn out. Note that when I say "delivered", 
   I mean that you never hear from the users of your
   application again (at least regarding your little 
   application.) 

   Reading the rationale is a good way to start to think
   in Ada terms.

3. Don't try to run Ada on the ZX-80, or the CBM Pet, or
   any other toy, including toy 'operating systems', because
   you will just get pissed off. That said, anything powerful
   enough to have a hardware multiply will be just fine.

4. When somebody of great experience who you respect, asks
   you "Why do you want to learn that? We used it on a Unix
   project five years ago but all the tasks hung whenever
   any task wanted an I/O service, so we had to use lots of
   small applications in 'C'." ask them why they did not
   write their small applications in Ada. Chances are they
   got stuck on point 1 and gave up, forever hating the
   language, (to be fair here they could have been using one
   of any number of compilers that were moderately crap five
   years ago, but now aren't, that does not mean that new
   Ada 95 compilers coming out from the big houses are going
   to be totally bug free, it is effectively a new language 
   after all.)

   Or if they look as though they are going to really start
   taking the piss, just shine them on with a reply such as:
   "I thought Unix was a truly great operating system, and
   supported loads of languages. Did Unix not support
   asynchronous Tasking_Services and I/O, like VMS, then?"
   :-) <- (Laurence please note.)

5. When you learned it, have a go at Lisp, it will really
   make you think, it is beyond, then TPU.
   
6. Don't forget 'C', ever, because anything you can do in 
   'C' with pointers, that a compliant Ada compiler will
   let you get away with, will stand you in great stead,
   when you have to do any dynamic applications.

Above all, you have got to love the language. If you don't
you'll get nowhere. However, if you love programming, then
you love all languages. Just bear in mind that no love is
as great as your first.
Blessed are the bigots.

---
Ian Ward's opinions only : ian@rsd.bel.alcatel.be
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Ian loves, Zilog Z80, Fiat 126's and Durham City. (Today.)