Re: How Would a Hobbyist Learn Ada?

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

Ankur Sethi writes:
>> It would be nice if you could tell us which parts of the Wikibook you
>> would like to see improved.
>
> I didn't get too far into the book, but one chapter I feel needs work
> is the one on the Ada type system. The code examples later in the
> chapter went right over my head. Moreover, some beginning chapters
> have paragraphs that seem out of place. They seem to have a paragraph
> about concurrency somewhere in the first chapter. My reaction was :
> "eh?".

I'll look into it I wrote or rewrote most of that chapter :) Of
course, if someone else beats me to it, that will be even better :)

> It's a very nice book, yes. But for a newbie, it's not much help.
> Somebody who has been programming for a while will undoubtedly pick up
> Ada pretty quickly from that book. I found John English's "The Craft
> of OO Programming" much better, although it is targeted towards
> complete beginners and not people like me who already know how to use
> another language (and covers Ada95, not Ada05).

I too like John English's book.  Despite having 15 years programming
experience, I enjoyed it when first learning Ada. YMMV.

> A question : when was the Ada 2005 standard defined? Wikipedia says it
> was in 2007. If that's true, we should soon be having books about it,
> right?

Finalised in 2005, approved and published by ISO in March 2007.  Yes,
John Barnes' book has already been updated.  He also wrote the
Rationale for Ada 2005 which is available on http://www.adaic.com.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.