Re: Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

Re: Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

[Mark A Biggar]

In article <637e34$5u6@sun04.tfh-berlin.de> weberwu@compute.tfh-berlin.de (Debora Weber-Wulff) writes:
>Now that's the way to promote a language! We are teaching Ada in
>all three computer-related degree programs as the first language.
>This semester we have more than 160 students beginning their
>studies.
>A colleague discovered that the company CCI in Meppen, Germany would
>send free copies of the Ada Tour 2.0 i (including the Lovelace
>tutorial, a collection of compilers and a pile of documentation)
>to anyone who asked. So we asked, and we promptly found big boxes
>of CDs waiting for us in the departmental offices.
>It was like Christmas, passing the CDs out in class! All those
>faces lit up - they were getting something for nothing! And the
>griping about us teaching a language not used in the Real World (tm)
>disappeared. This is exactly what needs to be done (and done fast)
>to attract young engineers to the language: give them a free taste
>of how good it is. Thanks to CCI for preparing this great CD!

Similarly I would like to publicly thank the nice people at ACM Ada Letters
for shiping out copies of the Walnut Creek Ada CD-ROM with the magazine
several months ago.  It has been very useful.

--
Mark Biggar
mab@wdl.lmco.com

Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

[Debora Weber-Wulff]

Now that's the way to promote a language! We are teaching Ada in
all three computer-related degree programs as the first language.
This semester we have more than 160 students beginning their
studies.

A colleague discovered that the company CCI in Meppen, Germany would
send free copies of the Ada Tour 2.0 i (including the Lovelace
tutorial, a collection of compilers and a pile of documentation)
to anyone who asked. So we asked, and we promptly found big boxes
of CDs waiting for us in the departmental offices.

It was like Christmas, passing the CDs out in class! All those
faces lit up - they were getting something for nothing! And the
griping about us teaching a language not used in the Real World (tm)
disappeared. This is exactly what needs to be done (and done fast)
to attract young engineers to the language: give them a free taste
of how good it is. Thanks to CCI for preparing this great CD!

-----
Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff      Technische Fachhochschule Berlin
                                  FB Informatik, Luxemburger Str. 10, 
                                  13353 Berlin, Germany          
weberwu@tfh-berlin.de             http://www.tfh-berlin.de/~weberwu/ 

Re: Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

[Brian Rogoff]

On 30 Oct 1997, John English wrote:
> ... about the website and inexpensive CDROM he produces ...  
>
> It also includes compilers, tutorials and documentation for about 20 other
> languages, a copy of the Free Online Dictionary of Computing with over
> 10000 entries, and lots more. The whole thing (all 650M of it) is freely
> available on the web at http://burks.bton.ac.uk -- have a look!

One of the language tutorials included on the web page is for SNOBOL4,
which may be very useful to programmers using GNAT 3.10 or higher. Thanks 
John, I couldn't find such a document anywhere else!

-- Brian

Re: Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

[John English]

Debora Weber-Wulff (weberwu@compute.tfh-berlin.de) wrote:
: Now that's the way to promote a language! We are teaching Ada in
: all three computer-related degree programs as the first language.
: This semester we have more than 160 students beginning their
: studies.

: A colleague discovered that the company CCI in Meppen, Germany would
: send free copies of the Ada Tour 2.0 i (including the Lovelace
: tutorial, a collection of compilers and a pile of documentation)
: to anyone who asked. So we asked, and we promptly found big boxes
: of CDs waiting for us in the departmental offices.

You may also be interested in a CD produced by myself at Brighton.
It's not free, since we have to cover production costs, but it's
as cheap as I could make it (UKP 3.00 a copy, falling in stages to
1.20 a copy in quantities of 1000). We have however managed to give
away 1500 copies to educational institutions thanks to sponsorship
from GEC-Marconi and Pavilion Internet.

The CD is a complete website-on-a-CD, based on a preinstalled copy
of Netscape Navigator. It includes GNAT 3.07 for DOS, 3.09 for 95/NT
(the CD was produced before 3.10 came out :-( ), 3.09 for Linux (as
well as a complete copy of Linux to go with it), ASIS, various libraries
and development tools, Lovelace, the RM95, Rationale, Style Guide and FAQs.
It also includes compilers, tutorials and documentation for about 20 other
languages, a copy of the Free Online Dictionary of Computing with over
10000 entries, and lots more. The whole thing (all 650M of it) is freely
available on the web at http://burks.bton.ac.uk -- have a look!

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
 Senior Lecturer           | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je
 Dept. of Computing        | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
 University of Brighton    |    -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

[Jon S Anthony]

Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> writes:

> 
> On 30 Oct 1997, John English wrote:
> > ... about the website and inexpensive CDROM he produces ...  
> >
> > It also includes compilers, tutorials and documentation for about 20 other
> > languages, a copy of the Free Online Dictionary of Computing with over
> > 10000 entries, and lots more. The whole thing (all 650M of it) is freely
> > available on the web at http://burks.bton.ac.uk -- have a look!
> 
> One of the language tutorials included on the web page is for SNOBOL4,
> which may be very useful to programmers using GNAT 3.10 or higher. Thanks 
> John, I couldn't find such a document anywhere else!

Is this really the correct link??  I keep getting that the server is
down or unavailable.

/Jon

-- 
Jon Anthony
Synquiry Technologies, Ltd., Belmont, MA 02178, 617.484.3383
"Nightmares - Ha!  The way my life's been going lately,
 Who'd notice?"  -- Londo Mollari

Re: Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

[Chris Morgan]

I can testify that John's CD is fantastic. I find the Walnut Creek
CD-ROM to be a mix of the latest and greatest and a _lot_ of old
obsolete junk. It is the ultimate resource but you need to spend time
sifting the wheat from the chaff. On John's disc he has spent that
time for you.

Windows95 is pretty much essential however (a surprising hurdle at my
last place, almost no serious Ada people had made the move yet).

Chris

(p.s. keep it to yourself, but my copy at least had shareware Doom on
it as well).
-- 
 	"everything remotely enjoyable turns out to be 
 	 powerfully addictive and expensive and bad for you"
						- Lizzy Bryant

Re: Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

[Lynch]

Chris Morgan (mihalis@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: I can testify that John's CD is fantastic. I find the Walnut Creek
: CD-ROM to be a mix of the latest and greatest and a _lot_ of old
: obsolete junk. It is the ultimate resource but you need to spend time
: sifting the wheat from the chaff. On John's disc he has spent that
: time for you.

: Windows95 is pretty much essential however (a surprising hurdle at my
: last place, almost no serious Ada people had made the move yet).


The Ada-Tour is supposed to run on anything down to Windows 3.1
on a 386 with 4MB (maybe 8MB for V2.0). For various strange
reasons the new installation program requires Win32s, but the
Tour itself runs fine on plain 3.1, which was one of the
requirements from the German defence ministry (so that it would
run on all/most of their machines).


I was slightly disappointed with the "Discovering Ada" CD-ROM
that was on my latest copy of Ada Letters. It appears to me as
one of those kind of presentations that are "too flashy for their
own good". No mention of any minimum requirements either.

Started it up at work and got a nice title screen with a single
button "previous user" or similar. I'm not a previous user, so
now what? Wait, nothing happens, wait, nothing happens...

How am I supposed to know that some friendly voice is trying
to talk to me? Of all the PCs at CCI I know only three that
have been equiped with a soundcard.

It looked and sounded great on my multimedia Pentium at home,
but how many people who are interested in Ada have access to
such a system? (Also the installation program did not seem to
think much of WinNT 4.0)


Out of interest: What is the intended target audience for the
"Discovering Ada" CD-ROM? Was any thought given to the minimum
hardware requirements needed to run the application?

Andrew.


--
Andrew Lynch, CCI GmbH Meppen

zur Zeit bei:
STN ATLAS Elektronik GmbH
Sebaldsbruecker Heerstrasse 235
28305 Bremen
Tel. 0421 457-1852 (Luegering/Lynch)
Email: lynch@castor.atlas.de

Re: Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

[Philip Brashear]

In article <64pkd2$lav@pink.atlas.de>, Lynch <lynch@castor> wrote:
>I was slightly disappointed with the "Discovering Ada" CD-ROM
>that was on my latest copy of Ada Letters. It appears to me as
>one of those kind of presentations that are "too flashy for their
>own good". No mention of any minimum requirements either.
>
>Started it up at work and got a nice title screen with a single
>button "previous user" or similar. I'm not a previous user, so
>now what? Wait, nothing happens, wait, nothing happens...
>

Well, you got further than I did.  When I tried to start the thing up,
I simply got a message telling me that it couldn't unzip the files.

Period.

I'm using a Dell notebook at work and an Acer notebook at home.  Neither
system would start up the CD ROM.

Any advice?

Phil Brashear
Technical Editor
ACM Ada Letters
(but I didn't have anything to do with the CD distribution)

Re: Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

[John English]

Chris Morgan (mihalis@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: I can testify that John's CD is fantastic. I find the Walnut Creek
: CD-ROM to be a mix of the latest and greatest and a _lot_ of old
: obsolete junk. It is the ultimate resource but you need to spend time
: sifting the wheat from the chaff. On John's disc he has spent that
: time for you.

: Windows95 is pretty much essential however (a surprising hurdle at my
: last place, almost no serious Ada people had made the move yet).

No, it'll work with Win 3.1... but then, of course, the only GNAT version
you can use is 3.07 for DOS.

: (p.s. keep it to yourself, but my copy at least had shareware Doom on
: it as well).

...and Quake, and some others; after all, it's aimed at *students*... :-)
(Some of the games include source code, so that's another excuse.)

Incidentally, in case you hadn't heard, Mike Feldman has kindly agreed
to handle North American distribution; full details at the CD website
(see my .sig).

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
 Senior Lecturer           | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je
 Dept. of Computing        | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
 University of Brighton    |    -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Three cheers for free CD-ROMS!

[Jerry van Dijk]

In article <64q6dq$mdp@ns1.sw-eng.falls-church.va.us> brashear@ns1.sw-eng.falls-church.va.us writes:

>Technical Editor
>ACM Ada Letters
>(but I didn't have anything to do with the CD distribution)

He explained carefully :-))

--

-- Jerry van Dijk | Leiden, Holland
-- Consultant     | Team Ada
-- Ordina Finance | jdijk@acm.org