I want to use ADA - Turbo Pascal/Delphi guy here

I want to use ADA - Turbo Pascal/Delphi guy here

[ActiveX]

Hi there

I am a Turbo Pascal / Delphi guy with 12 years of experience. I want to
start using ADA. I hope somebody could tell me where to start, what books to
refer to and what compilers to use on NT.
Now the problem is that I am seriously addicted to Delphi and I am in Japan
where getting English books is a very difficult thing. Are the ADA compilers
on NT as friendly and intutive as Delphi?

To be frank, I really do envy you guys using ADA day in and day out. I would
like to do some serious work using ADA. I also do wonder why Borland has not
come out with an ADA compiler with a Delphi look and feel. It could be a
real killer app.

ActiveX

Re: I want to use ADA - Turbo Pascal/Delphi guy here

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <6d0cdf$cnb$1@snow.b1.justsystem.co.jp>, "ActiveX" <anilms@rocketmail.com> writes:
> Hi there
> 
> I am a Turbo Pascal / Delphi guy with 12 years of experience. I want to
> start using ADA. I hope somebody could tell me where to start, what books to
> refer to and what compilers to use on NT.

If you have access to the World Wide Web, http://www.adahome.com has
a section on various Ada95 books available.  It also lists compilers
from various sources.

Based on your Delphi background, you might be interested in the Aonix
ObjectAda product which includes a GUI Builder.

> Now the problem is that I am seriously addicted to Delphi and I am in Japan
> where getting English books is a very difficult thing. Are the ADA compilers
> on NT as friendly and intutive as Delphi?

ObjectAda is not as user-friendly as Delphi yet, but they are making
progress and have never yet answered a request with "we never intend
to take it that far".  Their free demonstration version, unfortunately,
does not include the GUI Builder, which is what a Delphi veteran would
want.  http://www.aonix.com after much fussing will lead you to a way
to sign up for their mailing list of customer feedback (Intel-ObjectAda),
so you can make some judgements based on the comments of others.

The documentation situation is that you really need three sets of
books:

	About the Ada language itself (Amazon.com might ship to Japan
		for the right price)

	About the compiler you choose (comes with the compiler)

	About bindings to Windows NT --  there are no Ada-specific
		books of this sort, so most people read the C books
		published by Microsoft and translate in their head.
		Perhaps you would find it easier to read the Delphi
		books (where they talk about NT services).

There are other Ada environments for NT, and someone else will likely
respond discussing them.

> To be frank, I really do envy you guys using ADA day in and day out. I would
> like to do some serious work using ADA. I also do wonder why Borland has not
> come out with an ADA compiler with a Delphi look and feel. It could be a
> real killer app.

Ada (spelled with mixed case to be proper) would have the disadvantage
of not automatically drawing along their traditional customer base of
Turbo Pascal users.  Also, in times of financial challenge, I think
Borland is sticking to core competencies.  Note that although Delphi
is nominally for NT as well as other Windows operating systems, there
is no version of Delphi for the DEC (or Samsung) Alpha.

Larry Kilgallen

Re: I want to use ADA - Turbo Pascal/Delphi guy here

[ActiveX]

Laryy

Thank you very much for the information you have provided me. I intend to
start off immediately. I will go through the sites you mentioned. By the
way, somebody mailed me two CDs of Ada - a special edition to complement
ACM/SIGAda's July/August 1997 issue of Ada Letters Magazine. This also
contains some DOS based ADA compilers. I intend to try them out.

Thank you once again
Anil

Re: I want to use ADA - Turbo Pascal/Delphi guy here

[Kenneth W. Sodemann]

ActiveX wrote in message <6d0cdf$cnb$1@snow.b1.justsystem.co.jp>...
>Hi there
>
>Now the problem is that I am seriously addicted to Delphi and I am in Japan
>where getting English books is a very difficult thing. Are the ADA
compilers
>on NT as friendly and intutive as Delphi?
>

Simple answer, no.

Longer answer:  I use OjbectAda, which really isn't too bad, but no where
near the quality of Delphi (or even VC++ for that matter).  Also, complaired
to those two products (and considering you need to get the Proffesional
version before you get a half way OK (but not incredibley great) GUI
builder), you can expect to pay a little more for the tool than you would
for a stripped down version of Delphi or VC++** (which at least are still
usable for descent Windows dev.), either that or be prepared to do the old
'C' style right on top of the API programming (the Win32 bindings are _very_
thin to say the least).  MFC bindings are available, but not at a reasonable
price for a home user.  Basically, we are dealing with economies of scale
here, and it would be really hard for any company to provide what you get
with Delphi or VC++ and still sell it for a cheap price (unless that company
were MS or Borland, but then they would have the front end already basically
done, and would just need to do the Ada specific stuff).

On the cheaper side (as in free), GNAT is a good compiler, and I have heard
that there may be some IDE's for it, though I have not used them, and I
would not expect them to be anywhere near as nice as Delphi's front end.

** heck, you can get all of Visual Studio now for about $500.00 if you look
around a little.

>To be frank, I really do envy you guys using ADA day in and day out. I
would
>like to do some serious work using ADA. I also do wonder why Borland has
not
>come out with an ADA compiler with a Delphi look and feel.

1.)  They probably feel (possibly correctly) that there is not enough demand
for them to actually make money on such a product.
2.)  Borland is not exactly in the best financial condition, and cannot
really afford to be risking what they do have on niche markets that they are
not already in (yes, I realize Pascal is a niche market, but they were
already in that one).

> It could be a real killer app.
>

For folks like you and me, yes.  For Borlands bottom line, I highly doubt
it.

--
Ken Sodemann
stufflehead@bigfoot.com
http://www.pcii.net/~stuffel
Go 23, 24, 36, & ABE.  Go Pack!!

Re: I want to use ADA - Turbo Pascal/Delphi guy here

[Robert Dewar]

<<On the cheaper side (as in free), GNAT is a good compiler, and I have heard
that there may be some IDE's for it, though I have not used them, and I
would not expect them to be anywhere near as nice as Delphi's front end.
>>

As the Aonix site is quick to inform you, GNAT is not necessarily free,
since to use it with support can actually cost more than using the Aonix
compiler. However, freely available versions of both GNAT and the Aonix
compiler are downloadable at no cost. The public version of GNAT is
very close to a previous commercial version of GNAT, and is a full-language
implementation of Ada 95 with no restrictions. It is unsupported, but for
student use it is certainly quite usable.

Not only are several visual interfaces for GNAT available, but in fact both
the public and commercial versions of GNAT are distributed with AdaGIDE, a
visual interface created by Martin Carlisle at the Airforce Academy.

As for how this compares with Delphi, that's a judgment you can make for
yourself, since as I mentioned before GNAT (and AdaGIDE) are available
for public download (visit the ftp directory pub/gnat at cs.nyu.edu).
Several other visual interfaces, including GRASP and the University of
Brighton IDE are also available. 

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

Re: I want to use ADA - Turbo Pascal/Delphi guy here

[Kenneth W. Sodemann]

Robert Dewar wrote in message ...
><<On the cheaper side (as in free), GNAT is a good compiler, and I have
heard
>that there may be some IDE's for it, though I have not used them, and I
>would not expect them to be anywhere near as nice as Delphi's front end.
>>>
>
>As the Aonix site is quick to inform you, GNAT is not necessarily free,

True, but I was assuming this particular person was not going to want to
enter into a support agreement. :)

>since to use it with support can actually cost more than using the Aonix
>compiler. However, freely available versions of both GNAT and the Aonix
>compiler are downloadable at no cost. The public version of GNAT is
>very close to a previous commercial version of GNAT, and is a full-language
>implementation of Ada 95 with no restrictions. It is unsupported, but for
>student use it is certainly quite usable.

I would like to add to this that as a paying Aonix customer, I have been
fairly satisfied (an impression I may not have left with my first post,
however I was trying more to be completely honest that to be overly
glowing).  However, I have had contact with several folks who have tried
both the free version of OA, and the public version of GNAT.  The only real
negative I have heard about the public version of GNAT is that a couple of
folks ran into setup snags.  OTOH, I have heard more than a few complaints
about the free OA version (the biggest complaint being that the debugger
doesn't work properly (which was fixed to some degree in version 7.1.1, but
I have not heard of that making it into the free version yet)).

Also, thanks for the info on the IDE's.  I will pass that info on to some
folks I know who I do not believe read this newsgroup, but do use GNAT
casually.

--
Ken Sodemann
stufflehead@bigfoot.com
http://www.pcii.net/~stuffel
Go 23, 24, 36, & ABE.  Go Pack!!

Re: I want to use ADA - Turbo Pascal/Delphi guy here

[tmoran]

>'C' style right on top of the API programming (the Win32 bindings are _very_
>thin to say the least).  MFC bindings are available, but not at a reasonable

>way, somebody mailed me two CDs of Ada - a special edition to complement
>ACM/SIGAda's July/August 1997 issue of Ada Letters Magazine. This also

  You might take a look at the demo version of Claw (see
www.rrsoftware.com) to see if you like its thicker, Ada style, Windows
binding.  It runs with the Gnat 3.10p1 compiler, among others, but had
problems with 3.09 (as I recall), which might be what's on the
July/August 1997 CD.