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=-0.4 required=5.0 tests=AC_FROM_MANY_DOTS,BAYES_00 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,4871bb700d475964 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-06-06 10:36:20 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.ems.psu.edu!news.cis.ohio-state.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!opentransit.net!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!newsfeed.planete.net!psinet-france!psiuk-f4!psiuk-p4!uknet!psiuk-n!news.pace.co.uk!nh.pace.co.uk!not-for-mail From: "Marin David Condic" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: an interested business-oriented programmer Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 13:14:29 -0400 Organization: Posted on a server owned by Pace Micro Technology plc Message-ID: <9flodm$6jb$1@nh.pace.co.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 136.170.200.133 X-Trace: nh.pace.co.uk 991847670 6763 136.170.200.133 (6 Jun 2001 17:14:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@pace.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Jun 2001 17:14:30 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:8246 Date: 2001-06-06T17:14:30+00:00 List-Id: It depends on exactly what you are looking for. To start with, visit: http://www.adapower.org/ since this will point you at a lot of additional resources. I invite you to look over my Ada page at: http://www.mcondic.com/ - you may find code and links there that would be useful. (In particular, in my "Utilities" code, you'll find lots of financial calculations.) Is Ada suitable for business software development? Absolutely! In particular, Decimal types and Annex F aim to support business software. You probably won't find as much suppost in other general purpose languages. From a purely technical standpoint, I'd use Ada for serious business software development unless I had special conditions that made something else a better choice. (specific hardware without an Ada compiler, use of specific subsystems, databases, etc, that make some other language more practical...) Books: There are a number of books out there. See AdaPower for a bibliography. You can at least order some of them if not available in the bookstore. (Some are unfortunately out of print.) There are also on-line tutorials available so look for those as well. General advice: You can usually put together a good software development kit for Ada that will give you more or less the same facilities you might find in almost any other general purpose language. The down side is that you kind of have to assemble various pieces of it on your own. The Gnat public distribution (available free of charge - see links on Adapower or my page) is a good place to start for a set of very portable development tools. RR Software has an Ada compiler and a GUI Builder and API for the Windows environment called Claw. Aonix has compilers for a variety of platforms & other development tools as well. Lots of choices there, but you need to figure out what all your needs are and maybe go digging around for the missing pieces. (Ada doesn't come bundled with a large class library like Java or MSVC++ - a down side. But you can find collections of stuff all over that get you a lot of the same functionality.) You'll find that Ada is a lot more portable than other languages and that it isn't hard to move code from one processor/OS to another - as long as you stuck to what the language defines and don't use processor/OS dependent third-party stuff. (GUIs are a prime example - hard to make that portable and have all the wonderful features possible within a given OS!) This is an advantage to Ada and also a weakness. MSVC++ provides for all intents and purposes, its own version of C++. Using the whole of it, you won't build portable code - especially as you use the MFC. No portability, but boy can you get at all the nooks & crannies of Windows all from a nicely integrated development environment. Ada can build programs to run on a PC, but you have to assemble the pieces yourself to some extent and you don't get at all the corners of the OS quite so easily (sometimes easier - if you have the right tools). Personally, I'd rather do the job in Ada for a variety of reasons, but I can see why others might opt for what they can leverage out of tools more tailored to the specific environment. In other words, I'd recommend Ada, but be advised you might need to pull together different pieces from different sources rather than get a one-stop-shopping solution. MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Rod Weston" wrote in message news:f7ce0059.0106060822.55a13f7@posting.google.com... > I am currently surveying the state of programming in the business > world, deciding where to get involved with OOP. In the few days that > I have been evaluating Ada, it seems to have the attributes of a > language I would like to learn, but I am rather concerned about the > lack of popular support for it, especially in the business world. I > went to my local Barnes and Noble bookstore last night and found not a > single book on Ada. I went to my library and found only four books, > two of which were written before 1987. And I haven't seen a single > reference to a business (inventory, sales, etc.) program written in > Ada. Could someone offer some encouragement for me? I don't mind > being a pioneer, I just want to have some assurance that my efforts > will not be wasted. > > Thanks for your consideration. > > Rod Weston