Re: Suggestions to a Newbie

[Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <8ngv4j$ko9$1@news01.cit.cornell.edu>,
  "Cagdas Ozgenc" <co19@cornell.edu> wrote:
> I am interested in learning Ada 95. Could you please recommend:
>
> 1) A starter's book for a programmer with solid experience in
> programming with many other languages. Basically I do not want a book
> that teaches what recursion is etc. Also it would be better if it
> directly gets into practical applications with OO paradigm, without

We have about 15 different Ada books here at work. The favorite seems to
be Ada as a Second Language, by Norman H. Cohen.

> 2) A compiler for Windows NT, with a dedicated IDE. Free or commercial
> doesn't matter. Free would be better, but if the compiler and the IDE
> are developed by different people, or companies, I really do not want
> to go through the hell of configuring a generic IDE to run externally
> a compiler, and its debugger.

There a two available for no charge, one of which is also Free.

You can download ObjectAda special edition for free at www.aonix.com,
if you're willing to fill out a survey. It has a sort of junior-league
MS Visual-style IDE, and some other nice goodies. The drawback is that
its kinda old and has a package limit to how big a program it will
compile.

You can download the public ("student") release of Gnat at
ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/gnat/ . The latest version doesn't come with a GUI
IDE. But it is very well integrated into Emacs (which to me is better).
If you *must* have a GUI IDE, then adagide is available for download in
the same location. But emacs is really the official IDE. You can get the
latest version of emacs for Win32 platforms at
ftp://ftp.cs.washington.edu/pub/ntemacs/latest/ . Gnat is the compiler I
use for my home hobby activities.

(Note that all theese addresses are available on my homepage).


> Also, can we say that Ada is an allround language, or is it targeted
> for a specific field?

Ada is a general-purpose language, suitable for just about any activity
you can dream up.

> Are the libraries provided with Ada portable across several platforms,
> is there a Standard library for Ada?

There is a Standard Ada library, which is portable across all platforms
*and* implementations. In a pinch you can also import any C or OS
routine you need as well.

> How would you compare its performance to C++? (without biasing it with
> your love for Ada)

You can't. The theory we like to banty about here is that Ada ought to
be fater for the same amount of optimization effort, because it can
provide the compiler a lot more detailed information about what the user
is and isn't doing with their data. But any such improvement is going to
be swamped in practice by the actual implementations of the compilers in
question. Some compiler writers just put a whole lot more effort into
optimization than others. Some are great at optimizing certian things,
but may be horrible at others. Some compilers are a lot more mature
than others, and have had a lot more time to work on their optimization.
So all you can meaningfully ask is: "Is code written for compiler A
faster than equivalent code written for compiler B"? Once you ask it
this way, its pretty obvious how to find your answer.

You can find the answers to a lot of your questions at AdaPower.
http://www.adapower.com . Check it out.

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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