* Re: available ada books?
1988-07-13 22:00 available ada books? meaningless trivia
@ 1988-07-18 14:47 ` johndoe
0 siblings, 0 replies; 2+ messages in thread
From: johndoe @ 1988-07-18 14:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
***** ada-uts:comp.lang.ada / ssc-bee.ssUC~Q\b!sdy / 6:00 pm Jul 13, 1988
this is where my notesfile says it came from. i tried email, but
no chance! This one's also loooong, so skip it if you're an Ada-god.
So if you were going to pick one reference book (not the LRM) for a person
who already knows some Ada which one would it be?
We have a few Barnes' books around here that aren't too bad but I figure there
must have been some newer ones published since then.
I've never seen the Ada book by Barnes, so i really have no basis for
making a true comparison.
A book i have had pretty good success with is Ada as a second language
by Norman H. Cohen (McGraw Hill:1986). If you don't know Ada or only
know a little, but do know another language pretty well, this book is
for you. It uses some examples of PL/I, FORTRAN and Pascal to
illustrate some of the constructs in Ada and the reasons for them;
(the author proclaims, however, that if you don't know one of these
languages, the book should still be self-explanatory.)
The text is divided into 20 chapters:
1 - A history of Ada; you can skip this chapter
2 - A whirlwind introduction to Ada; this chapter makes
at least a passing reference to just about everything in
Ada - useful for knowing where all the pieces fit in as
you read the rest of the chapters.
3 - Ada Types and how the user can define types
4 - Object and Type Declarations; how to declare variables, etc.
5 - Access types; Ada's version of pointers
6 - Subtypes and Equivalence; restrictions on the use of types,
differences between types and subtypes, use of constraints
7 - Statements
8 - Expressions - includes how to use aggregates, records, and
attributes
9 - Subprograms - includes a discussion on structure
10 - Record types with discriminants; description of and use of
11 - Packages
12 - Private and Limited Private types
13 - Separate compilation; order of compilation; elaboration
14 - Rules of scope and visibility; ordered better than LRM
15 - Exceptions; handling, propogation, guidelines for use
16 - Generic units; with helpful examples and explanation
17 - Predefined i/o; discussion of file types, internal and
external i/o, manipulating external files, stream-oriented
i/o, sequential and direct-access i/o
18 - Introduction to tasks; includes introductory comments on
concurrency and a comparison to sequential problems
19 - controlling task interaction; this chapter and the last
obviously go into more detail since there is no widely
used language to use a starting point for comparison.
20 - Low-level i/o; use of the language for the truly nitty gritty
The text is fairly comprehendible, and it is quite extensive, but
for that very reason, it is quite large (the edition i have is over
800 pages!) Besides that, the only thing i don't like about it is
the way the author defines his own method of coding for readability,
which is almost a direct opposite of the LRM standard (e.g.
FUNCTION Three_Way_Adder (First, Second, Third : IN Integer)
RETURN Integer IS
instead of
function THREE_WAY_ADDER (FIRST, SECOND, THIRD : in INTEGER)
return INTEGER is
This is merely a matter of personal preference, however. Otherwise,
it gets my recommendation.
----------
Kirk Beitz
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