Re: Ada as a first language

[rolf.ebert_nospam_@gmx.net]

> For example if you are interested in robotics you may wish to develop for
> embedded processors, e.g. to read position sensors and control stepper motors
> (or BLDC or induction motors, depending how serious you are!)
> Of all the small embedded controllers, only one family (the Atmel AVR) has an
> Ada compiler targetting it. (google AVR Ada)
>

I had used AVR-Ada on the Asuro, a very cheap (<40€) toy robot (http://
www.arexx.com/arexx.php?cmd=goto&cparam=p_asuro). My Ada equivalent of
the Asuro-lib (http://sourceforge.net/projects/asuro) covers about 60
- 80%.


> As it happens the AVR is quite a good choice - there are low-cost boards,
> programmers, and peripherals (sensors, steppers) for it (www.arduino.cc) , and
> it is used in a number of popular robotics projects (http://www.reprap.org)

I happen to got started on the Arduino as well.  There will be growing
support for it in AVR-Ada. (not in the short term)

> HOWEVER I can't find ANY tutorial on putting these (AVR Ada and Arduino)
> together.
>
> It can't be too hard.
>

No, it isn't hard.  But still, someone has to do it.

> And it looks like an ideal match.
>
> But ... no, I haven't tried it either.
>
> One piece of good news is that Ada interfaces to C fairly easily. Assuming that
> works in the AVR-Ada compiler (can anyone confirm that?) you can use any C
> libraries (e.g. to talk to peripherals) on a "fit and forget" basis, from Ada.
>

Accessing C functions from Ada works well with AVR-Ada.  If you need
small code you cannot profit from inlining, however.  It might be
useful if you want to access complete libraries, e.g. a TCP/IP stack.
But then quite a number of peripherals are already directly available
in Ada (e.g. 1-wire, I2C, UART, LCD, EEPROM, timers)

   R