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, LOTS_OF_MONEY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5b062cdca243a886 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-08-01 09:15:42 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!psinet-eu-nl!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: Please review and comment Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 11:44:31 -0400 Organization: Posted on a server owned by Pace Micro Technology plc Message-ID: <9k9851$pbp$1@nh.pace.co.uk> References: <3B67526E.D7E19382@worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 136.170.200.133 X-Trace: nh.pace.co.uk 996680673 25977 136.170.200.133 (1 Aug 2001 15:44:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@news.cam.pace.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 Aug 2001 15:44:33 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:10955 Date: 2001-08-01T15:44:33+00:00 List-Id: Consider also looking at any FAQs that are out there. One thing that comes up frequently is Text_IO and how to output integers, floast, etc. MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Ted Dennison" wrote in message news:dEU97.13861$ar1.44074@www.newsranger.com... > In article <3B67526E.D7E19382@worldnet.att.net>, James Rogers says... > > > >listing common Ada programming idioms. This request seemed quite > . > >contents. I would like comments on the current table of contents. > > As a general comment, the organization seems a little backwards. The > organization you showed looks a lot like the organization of the LRM, which is > not exactly a beginner-friendly document. :-) It looks like you are planning on > presenting each feature of Ada, and then discuss what can be done with it. A > newbie is probably going to want to know the opposite: how one does X in Ada. > > The rest of my comments pretty much flow from the first one. > > I don't see anything in there explicitly about strings. That seems to be the > newbie's biggest mental stumbling block with Ada, and I'm sure they'd go looking > for it in your document. There is a section on arrays, which presumbably would > include this information. But for a newbie, I'd suspect it would be more useful > to introduce the material as "how to do strings", then later point out that many > of the same techniques (excepting of course, the ones relying on Ada.Strings.*) > work for *any* array. > > Also, there should probably be something in there on bit-accessable data > structures, like packed boolean arrays, rep-ed clause boolean-only records, and > modular types, and when each is appropriate. > > I'd be sure to put in something basic on passing parameters. Newbies often have > the mis-impression that the data for all parameters is always copied, and thus > pointers should be used for efficiency. > > --- > T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html > home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com