What is ADA?

What is ADA?

[David Chang]

Hello,

	My name is David Chang, I am undergraduate student at University
of Maryland Baltimore County.  I am third year college student study in
Computer Science.

	Recently I just got a offer from a company that wants me to be a
Ada programmer.  And I know nothing about ADA, I told the software manager
that.  He(software manager) said that I don't know ada doesn't concern
him.  So, he offered me the job.  I don't want to let him down and I want
to perform my future task as nearly perfect as I can.

	So, will you nice people be kindly give me a rough idea what's
Ada and how different it is compare with C(My best programming language).
How should I be prepared for it?  What I need to read or do? and
Suggestions for books or readings, etc.  I will be very approciate it.

	The additional information that will help me is that.  Where can I
get a Ada compiler and what platform can it exist on.  How many version of
Ada is out there, price of compiler, etc.  Thank you, thank you very much.  

Thank you for your time

-----
David Teng-Zan Chang
Email:  tchang2@stsci.edu
URL:	http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~tchang2

Re: What is ADA?

[Robert Dewar]

go to www.adahome.com, you will find everything you need there, and good
luck in your job!

Re: What is ADA?

[Alan Brain]

David Chang wrote:

>         So, will you nice people be kindly give me a rough idea what's
> Ada and how different it is compare with C(My best programming language).
> How should I be prepared for it?  What I need to read or do? and
> Suggestions for books or readings, etc.  I will be very approciate it.
> 
>         The additional information that will help me is that.  Where can I
> get a Ada compiler and what platform can it exist on.  How many version of
> Ada is out there, price of compiler, etc.  Thank you, thank you very much.
> 
> Thank you for your time

David, first congrats on getting the job. BTW you won't be Robinson
Crusoe in knowing little about the language. Most firms are set up to
teach you on the job out of neccessity.

Secondly, all you ever wanted to know is in http://www.adahome.com/

Thirdly, although if you go to the above URL it will answer all your
questions, here's some short answers to your specific questions anyway.

How does Ada compare with C?
- There's an article at the above site, on the equivalencies for Ada and
C - "Ada for C programmers"
If you read K&R, in the preface it states that C is a relatively
low-level language. You're dealing with bytes, floats and so on, very
close to the way the machine operates, with few concessions to
expressing a solution to a problem in the real world. Ada is a
high-level language, where it's possible (even encouraged) not just to
distinguish between ints and floats, but between temperatures and
distances.

How should you prepare for it?
- Do the Lovelace on-line tutorial, available at http://www.adahome.com/
which is by far the best on-line tutorial for any language I've ever
seen.

Suggestions for books
- I like Barnes, "Programming in Ada" but there are many others, see the
URL for details.

Where can I get a Ada compiler and what platform can it exist on.
- http://www.adahome.com/ has several FREE Ada compilers. GNAT is
probably the best, it's "Industrial Strength", not just a learning
compiler. Platform - IBM compatible, MAC, Unix...

How many version of Ada is out there, price of compiler, etc.
- There's Ada-83 (the original) and Ada-95. Many of the OO concepts in
C++ are already in Ada-83, Ada-95 has the rest plus a lot more. As to
price of compiler, you can download a FREE one, or buy a CD from Walnut
Creek which has 1.3 GB of Ada material, including compilers, tutorials,
the language reference manual, etc etc etc available at
http://www.cdrom.com/ I believe. Cost plus shipping is under $45.

BTW it's Ada not ADA.  
-- 
aebrain@dynamite.com.au     <> <>    How doth the little Crocodile
| Alan & Carmel Brain|      xxxxx       Improve his shining tail?
| Canberra Australia |  xxxxxHxHxxxxxx _MMMMMMMMM_MMMMMMMMM
100026.2014 compuserve o OO*O^^^^O*OO o oo     oo oo     oo  
                    By pulling MAERKLIN Wagons, in 1/220 Scale
See http://www.z-world.com/graphics/z/master/8856.gif for picture

Re: What is ADA?

[bill]

In article <36D10384.CB4925C8@GoAway.com>, Corvus says...
>
>More specifically:  What does it look like?  How would I write a "hello
>world" program in Ada?
>-- 
>This is my .SIG file.  Enjoy.

a good place is to start at http://www.adahome.com , it has links to many
Ada places and info on Ada.  

Ada 'looks' more like Pascal, than C or C++ or Java. It is a strongly typed
language, and with more features than Pascal.

to write hello world, it will be something like this:


with ada.text_io; use ada.text_io;
procedure t is
begin
   put_line("hello world");
end t;

bill.

Re: What is ADA?

[Nick Roberts]

Tom Moran wrote in message <36d10576.41783508@news.pacbell.net>...
[...]
|  Unless of course you are running as flight control software for an
|airliner and have no console to write on.  Perhaps you could then make
|the plane act like a skywriter, but there's not enough room in this
|short e-mail for that sample program. ;)

But that _would_ the most winning HW program!

-------------------------------------
Nick Roberts
-------------------------------------

Re: What is ADA?

[David Botton]

Take a look at The Ada Source Code Treasury - http://www.botton.com/ada

You will not only find sample code you can look at, but also:

Resource to learn Ada, http://www.botton.com/ada/learn and a good
starting point with links to just about every Ada site on the planet.

You might also look at why I use ada -
http://www.botton.com/ada/articles/whyada.html

David Botton



Corvus wrote:
> 
> More specifically:  What does it look like?  How would I write a "hello
> world" program in Ada?
> --
> This is my .SIG file.  Enjoy.

What is ADA?

[Corvus]

More specifically:  What does it look like?  How would I write a "hello
world" program in Ada?
-- 
This is my .SIG file.  Enjoy.

Re: What is ADA?

[Matthew Heaney]

Ada is a high-level systems-programming language, with built-in support
for concurrency and real-time programming.  Designed to catch
programming errors both at compile-time and run-time, it facilitates the
construction of large, low-defect software systems.

<http://www.adahome.com/>
<http://www.adaic.org/>
<http://www.adaresource.org/>

GNAT is a free, high-quality Ada95 compiler.  Aonix also has a free
student edition.

<http://www.gnat.com/>
<http://www.aonix.com/>


with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO;
procedure Hello_World is
begin
  Put_Line ("Hello, world!");
end;



Corvus <NoWay@GoAway.com> writes:

> More specifically:  What does it look like?  How would I write a "hello
> world" program in Ada?
> -- 
> This is my .SIG file.  Enjoy.

Re: What is ADA?

[Tom Moran]

>More specifically:  What does it look like?  How would I write a "hello
>world" program in Ada?
  A simple Ada program looks a lot like Pascal.  Do you know Pascal?
with Ada.Text_IO;
procedure Hi is
begin Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line("Hello World");end Hi;
  Unless of course you are running as flight control software for an
airliner and have no console to write on.  Perhaps you could then make
the plane act like a skywriter, but there's not enough room in this
short e-mail for that sample program. ;)

Re: What is ADA?

[Corvus]

Thank you for your answers.  I know it sounded like a high school
question, but I've been curious.  I code in a few languages, One of them
Pascal so I'm hoping I won't have to much trouble...

Anyway, Thanx.  Ciao.
Corvus wrote:
> 
> More specifically:  What does it look like?  How would I write a "hello
> world" program in Ada?
> --
> This is my .SIG file.  Enjoy.

-- 
This is my .SIG file.  Enjoy.

Re: What is ADA?

[robert_dewar]

In article <36D10384.CB4925C8@GoAway.com>,
  Corvus <NoWay@GoAway.com> wrote:
> More specifically:  What does it look like?
> How would I write a "hello world" program in Ada?

These two questions (what does it look like, and how do
I write hello world) have almost nothing at all to do
with one another.

Ada is about writing large programs.

Small programs have almost nothing to do with large
programs. I remember someone from NASA once saying that
studying small programs and thinking you are making
progress on understanding how to write large programs is
like NASA having an astronaut climb a tree -- well he's
making progress, he is closer to the moon :-) :-)

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Re: What is ADA?

[dennison]

In article <36D11BA2.2FE97A02@GoAway.com>,
  Corvus <NoWay@GoAway.com> wrote:
> Thank you for your answers.  I know it sounded like a high school
> question, but I've been curious.  I code in a few languages, One of them
> Pascal so I'm hoping I won't have to much trouble...

Ada's a bit of a jump from Pascal. Comming from Modula-2 I picked up the
basics in a week. Tasks took another couple of weeks, and generics took
longer yet.

T.E.D.

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Re: What is ADA?

[Ehud Lamm]

On Mon, 22 Feb 1999 dennison@telepath.com wrote:

> Ada's a bit of a jump from Pascal. Comming from Modula-2 I picked up the
> basics in a week. Tasks took another couple of weeks, and generics took
> longer yet.
> 

The first article I give my Ada students is "Why Pascal Is not My Favorite
Programming Language" by Brian Kernighan.

Even though I am a Pascal fan (at least as compared to C, and for teaching
purposes). However I find the article illuminating, since it shows the
fundamental problems with Pascal. By solving those, Ada is a great step
forward - evne before you consider generics, OOP and tasking. (Not to
mention the best facilities for data hiding).

Ehud Lamm     mslamm@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il
http://www2.cybericites.com/e/ehud   - Find other articles I recommend! 

Re: What is ADA?

[Gautier]

robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com wrote:

> In article <36D10384.CB4925C8@GoAway.com>,
>   Corvus <NoWay@GoAway.com> wrote:
> > More specifically:  What does it look like?
> > How would I write a "hello world" program in Ada?

> These two questions (what does it look like, and how do
> I write hello world) have almost nothing at all to do
> with one another.

> Ada is about writing large programs.

> Small programs have almost nothing to do with large
> programs. I remember someone from NASA once saying that
> studying small programs and thinking you are making
> progress on understanding how to write large programs is
> like NASA having an astronaut climb a tree -- well he's
> making progress, he is closer to the moon :-) :-)

To be clear: large programs, not small. If your program is 
less than 10'000 lines, some compilers will refuse to compile
it: "Error at line 9702: End-of-file found. No serious
usage of Ada. No object file produced; please add stuff
and retry.".
And try to hide identifiers like "Bitmap", "Mouse", too.

Gautier

Re: What is ADA?

[Michael Young]

Hello, David. Alas, the treasury on that page is *EMPTY*! I looked for
examples of digestible code, and found none. The irony of it overwhelms
me at this moment. :)

Michael.

David Botton wrote:
> 
> Take a look at The Ada Source Code Treasury - http://www.botton.com/ada
> 
> You will not only find sample code you can look at, but also:
> 
> Resource to learn Ada, http://www.botton.com/ada/learn and a good
> starting point with links to just about every Ada site on the planet.
> 
> You might also look at why I use ada -
> http://www.botton.com/ada/articles/whyada.html
> 
> David Botton
> 
> Corvus wrote:
> >
> > More specifically:  What does it look like?  How would I write a "hello
> > world" program in Ada?
> > --
> > This is my .SIG file.  Enjoy.

Re: What is ADA?

[bill]

In article <36D2A554.88EF1F69@Maths.UniNe.CH>, Gautier says...
>
 
>
>To be clear: large programs, not small. If your program is 
>less than 10'000 lines, some compilers will refuse to compile
>it: "Error at line 9702: End-of-file found. No serious
>usage of Ada. No object file produced; please add stuff
>and retry.".
>And try to hide identifiers like "Bitmap", "Mouse", too.
>

speaking of large programs.
 
I heared that when the goverment used to pay contractors for 
code by how counting how many lines of code, a paying some fee
per/line, that people used to write large amount of dead code 
which does nothing but increase the size of the program, as in:

if( false )
   x:= 1;
   y:=2;
   x:=y;
   y:=2;
else
   -- ok, do real work now, we earned enough goverment money allready :)
 end if

btw, notice that in Java, the above is not possible. Java does not
allow code that can't be reached from being compiled. (which can
sometimes be annoying actually).

bill

Re: What is ADA?

[Gautier]

> speaking of large programs.

> I heared that when the goverment used to pay contractors for
> code by how counting how many lines of code, a paying some fee
> per/line, that people used to write large amount of dead code
> which does nothing but increase the size of the program, as in:

> if( false )
>    x:= 1;
>    y:=2;
>    x:=y;
>    y:=2;
> else
>    -- ok, do real work now, we earned enough goverment money allready :)
>  end if

> btw, notice that in Java, the above is not possible. Java does not
> allow code that can't be reached from being compiled. (which can
> sometimes be annoying actually).

You could add useless code in reachable code:
  x:= 1 * x + 
      0 * (
       y + 2 +
       z );

A real case: a programmer team had to put every constant into a common file
in order (surely) to keep common data dimensions etc. What did the people do
to avoid updates or just to make a quick hack ? 1+1+1+1+1 for 5 etc. !

-- 
Gautier

Re: What is ADA?

[Tom Moran]

>To be clear: large programs, not small. If your program is 
>less than 10'000 lines, some compilers will refuse to compile
>it: "Error at line 9702: End-of-file found. No serious
>usage of Ada. No object file produced; please add stuff
>and retry.".
Another feature of Ada is the official validation suite.  If a
compiler doesn't pass it, for instance if it didn't compile
  procedure p is begin null;end p;
as a legitimate Ada program, that compiler would fail validation and
could not be called a "validated" Ada compiler.
P.S. My personal sense of humor doesn't include teasing newcomers who
may not realize their leg is being pulled.

Re: What is ADA?

[Bob Munck]

On Mon, 22 Feb 1999 13:57:33 GMT, robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com wrote:

>Ada is about writing large programs.
>
>Small programs have almost nothing to do with large
>programs.

And note that there seems to be a great deal less writing
of large programs these days.   Programmers using
"visual" programming tools are mostly writing very small,
coding-course-homework-size methods and event handlers.

I'm not sure we really _need_ Y2K to destroy civilization.

Bob Munck
Mill Creek Systems LC

Re: What is ADA?

[robert_dewar]

In article <36d22f64.15051552@news.mindspring.com>,
  munck@Mill-Creek-Systems.com (Bob Munck) wrote:
>> And note that there seems to be a great deal less
> writing
> of large programs these days.   Programmers using
> "visual" programming tools are mostly writing very small,
> coding-course-homework-size methods and event handlers.

I see no reason to think this is the case, do you have
data. I would guess that more and larger programs are
being written all the time. Yes, the *proportion* of
large programs may be smaller, due to the activities
you talk about, but to say there is a significant decline
in large programs seems unsupportable to me, and quite
at odds with my impressions.

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Re: What is ADA?

[Steve Quinlan]

Michael Young wrote:

> Hello, David. Alas, the treasury on that page is *EMPTY*! I looked for
> examples of digestible code, and found none. The irony of it overwhelms

 Didn't look empty to me -- I downloaded a zip file from one of the areas. Does
this relieve the sense of irony?

Re: What is ADA?

[David Botton]

The Ada Source Code Treasury exists to serve the Ada community.
I would be more then happy to modify it in any way that will help to
facilitate this goal.

I encourage any one with ideas of how the site can be improved to drop
me a note at David@Botton.com.

It appears that the "About the Ada Source Code Treasury Link" was
confusing for some, so I have changed it to "About This Site" instead.

The sections on "Language and Technique Examples", "Operating System
Related Examples", and "Algorithm Related Examples" are articles that
include example code in Ada.

"Source Code Packages for Reuse" section contains links to packages and
bindings for use in your applications, along with a couple of local
packages.

The "Articles" section contains articles on Ada that are not directly
related to code examples or are very broad in nature.

The sections "Learning Ada", "Reference Materials", and "Links" contain
links to various Ada resource on the net.

The "Project" section is an area for fielding proposals for public
projects to support Ada.

I hope this clears up any confusion with the site, of course any
suggestions are always welcome.

Thank you,
David Botton


> On Tue, 23 Feb 1999 09:21:27 -0600, Michael Young <mikey@mcs.com> >Hello, David. Alas, the treasury on that page is *EMPTY*! I looked for

Brian Orpin wrote:
> I think you are misunderstanding (It wasn't immediately clear to me
> either).  The page with the word 'treasury' in it is just the about page.