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=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,19e983c5955f75f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-04-05 07:40:03 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-03!supernews.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!unlnews.unl.edu!newsfeed.ksu.edu!nntp.ksu.edu!news.okstate.edu!dvdeug From: dvdeug@x8b4e53cd.dhcp.okstate.edu (David Starner) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Learning Ada (newbie) Date: 4 Apr 2001 16:00:53 GMT Organization: Oklahoma State University Message-ID: <9afgfl$8i41@news.cis.okstate.edu> References: <9af9ao$6ee$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> Reply-To: dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org NNTP-Posting-Host: x8b4e531b.dhcp.okstate.edu User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.3 (Linux) Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:6509 Date: 2001-04-04T16:00:53+00:00 List-Id: On Wed, 4 Apr 2001 15:25:27 +0200, Ayende Rahien wrote: >2. Can you recommend a good IDE for Ada? Preferably for Windows. Emacs for Windows is an IDE for Ada; it's a bit generalized and bears little resemblance to the Visual C++ IDE, but it's the tool of choice of quite a few programmers. >3. I read in Jargon File that "hackers find Ada's exception handling & >inter-process communication particularly hilarious." among other stuff. Why >is that? No one's quite sure. Ada's exception handling bears close resemblance to the exception handling of many other languages. Ada 83 may be bigger than most other languages of the early 80's, but Ada 83/95 is significantly smaller than many languages of the 90's - especially C++. >What are the advantages & disadvantages of Ada compare to C or C++ >and other languages? Ada is a whole lot more anal about stuff than C or C++, tending to move errors from run-time to compile-time. Ada often allows you to work at a higher level than C. (For example, if you want to work with a substring, you create one (string (1 .. 3)) and pass it around. There's no need to go messing with string functions and finding a static buffer or allocating memory.) Ada can be compiled to a JVM and interoperate with Java. There's very few Ada compilers out there that don't implement the whole language, unlike C++. Most of the disadvantages are not inherant in the language. Ada doesn't have the support of C, C++ and Visual Basic. Most libraries for those languages will work, but it will take some work finding a recent binding or writing your own. -- David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org "I don't care if Bill personally has my name and reads my email and laughs at me. In fact, I'd be rather honored." - Joseph_Greg