From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,e486c4cecbbc6a4a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: khrabrov@unagi.cis.upenn.edu (Alexy Khrabrov) Subject: Re: Ada book help Date: 1999/01/23 Message-ID: <78d1tm$pm4$1@netnews.upenn.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 436046934 References: <36A8FC33.3B4BA48A@virgin.net> Organization: University of Pennsylvania Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1999-01-23T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: I've just got a new Ada textbook, for pushing into our UPenn curriculum, Ada for Software Engineers, M. Ben-Ari, (Technion, Israel) Addison-Wesley Longman, 1998. It has Tucker Taft's endorsement that it's "one of the best", which is what cautious people normally say when they want to say just "the best". As in dealings with Iraq, Israel here again outpaces US. The book maintains European width of view and solid philosophical foundation of software engineering, which too many US books forsake while chasing hype of OO parlance. Aside, there's nothing useful in calling functions "methods", and variables "members" or even "private members". For that matter, Fortran's SUBROUTINE still pleases my eye more than cold and impersonal "procedure". I don't believe in OO/Windoze parlance waves. They will all disappear, while SUBROUTINE will still be in use. Say with me: OO/ShmOO. ActiveX/ShmActiveX. CORBA/ShmORBA. DCOM/DshmOM. Java/ShmAVA. Microsoft/ShMicroshmoft. :-) This Ada book keeps the eyes on the prize of solid software engineering whilke avoiding useless terminological debris. AWL once again proves itself as a great publisher of computer books. No coincidence they acquired Longman, the publisher of the best English dictionary, the first one circularly checked with a computer as early as in 1979... Cheers, Alexy