Re: Newbie wanna Ada

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

The big companies get behind their proprietary things because it helps them
lock up market share. Good for the stockholders. Bad for consumers. Ada is
difficult to lock up because it is an ISO standard and a number of vendors
are out there with products - unlike a number of other languages which are
either the property of one vendor or have customizations in them that make
them non-portable.

As for lack of books/etc. on the shelves of major stores? That is a
quandary. However there are a few things to do. One is to call a few of your
local bookstores and ask them if they have any. Enough calls starts
indicating demand and they'll start looking to stock some material. Another
thing is to ask them to special-order books you can find out about here and
elsewhere. If you're buying them that definitely indicates demand. A third
thing is to visit:

http://www.adapower.com/

You will find a wealth of materials pointed to from there. You will discover
that there are some fine resources for learning Ada on-line - totally
circumventing the Pulp-and-Ink Publishers (Do I get to trademark that one?
:-). You will also find sources for compilers, (some free - some at least
cheap) source code libraries, tools, etc.

If you're interested in learning about Ada, you'll find lots of folks
willing to help you out and a number of resources that make it easy to get
started.

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/


"Maciej Sobczak" <maciej@maciejsobczak.com> wrote in message
news:3BD9A519.5040502@maciejsobczak.com...
> Hi,
>
> Thank you very much for your answers.
>
> I'm convinced now that Ada is quite mature technology with lots of stuff
> behind it, although there is no (S)uper (U)niversal (N)etwork of
> resellers nor any (M)ajor (S)oftware company like (I)nnocent (B)ig
> (M)anufacturer, that would shove big bucks into its development. They'd
> rather play fool with their own, non-standard toys.
>
> Many of my colleagues haven't heard about Ada and it's a vain effort to
> find something about it in our bookshops. Not mentioning the employers.
> But I'll keep learning and playing with it, there has to be some reason
> why big and critical systems are built in Ada, right?
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Maciej Sobczak
> http://www.maciejsobczak.com
>