Re: Idea of a new Ada website.

[crebralfix@angelfire.com (tom)]

Hi all,

I've just picked up Ada95 out of frustration and annoyance with C++. 
Since I'm totally new to Ada, I've been collecting code, tools and
books for self-study.  I have many, many links around the web and a
website to aggregate a bunch of them would be nice.  I have also
encountered many dead links.

The website should have a copy of the Ada Library Reference Manual for
download.  All links that I have found so far do not work, but the
online version seems to work just fine.

I really like the idea of a project page similar to Sourceforge.  I'd
also like to see 2 kinds of Ada forges:  one for learning projects for
noobs and one for serious stuff.

IDEA:  My goal is to become employed and work on an Ada project. 
Since I'm learning the language alone, having a mentor would be nice. 
A mentor system, similar to that of SAGE, would be a great help to
anyone interested in Ada.   Such a system would help Ada noobs by
generating and maintaining interest as well as creating a sense of
community.

The mentors could assume responsibility for "grading" newbie answers
to projects in the Ada forge noob section.  Generally, I see the
mentors looking over the noob's code and simply asking questions about
it in order to get the noob to move their thoughts in the right
direction.  After a suitable number of iterations AND progress, a
series of possible answers would then be made available to the noob by
the mentor (by adding the noob's username to that problems's access
list).

You could probably set all this up on Sourceforge.  Each project gets
both a project site and a public web site.  I'm sure Sourceforge would
allow alot of the things you are talking about, especially since
you're promoting the language and projects for it.  SF also provides
database and CVS access.  Besides, Sourceforge has the bandwidth and
is completely free.  The downside is that you have to use Apache and
not the Ada webserver :)

I would be willing to assist with the website.  I also like to write
and would be willing to share my "discoveries" about Ada in the form
of essays, tutorials and examples.

--Tom