Re: Group newbie !

[Rich Maggio <maggior@world2u.com>]

Mike,

I, like you, was provided with the "opportunity" to learn Ada in a 
data structures class that I took.  I am an experienced "C" programmer
and was not all that happy about the fact that I had to delve into 
learning another programming language as part of the course.

But, as you may have noted by my recent post to the news group, I am
glad that I took the oppertunity.  I won't repeat it here.

I started with the Barnes Ada 95 book.  I don't recommend this for a 
beginner (to Ada that is) because it goes into too much detail and is
very 
overwhelming.  I was overwhelmed by it an I write "C" code for a living!

My teacher lent me a book by Michael Feldman.  The exact title escapes
me,
but it has Ada 95 in the title.  An excellent book.  This book, in
combination
with the Barnes Ada 95 book, were just what the doctor ordered.  The
thing 
missing in the Barnes book is complete examples.  The Feldman book has
PLENTY.
The Feldman book starts out easy and gets into the more complicated
stuff at
a nice pace without being boring.  As I recall, there is an appendix in
the
back that shows abbreviated syntax rules.  A very useful book.  

Also, familiarize yourself with the Adahome website.  I found out about
this
only recently and I wish I knew about it back in September.  Get youself
a copy
of the GNAT compiler - it's free and it works GREAT!  If you have a DOS
machine,
the EZ2LOAD package is a breeze to both install and use.

So, I recommend that you get the GNAT compiler and spend some time
familiarizing 
yourself with it.  Get the Feldman book and work with some of the very
simple 
examples to get going with the compiler.  Get familiar with GDB (the
debugger) also.
It's best to do this BEFORE you have a project due the next day and you
can't track
down a bug in your code!  

One last thing - if you get the GNAT package, be sure to read the file
EZ2LOAD.DOC
from beginning to end before you even fire the compiler up.  There are
lots of little
things in there that you NEED to know to be successful with the
compiler.  There are
some things that it is picky about (namely file naming conventions) that
will drive 
you up the wall if you have to figure it out on your own.

Just thought I would share some of my experience - maybe some out there
can benefit
from it, as well as you Mike.

Hope it helps!
Rich Maggio


> I suppose I'm looking for an Ada manual or user guide or whatever you
> wanna call it stuffed with hard facts. All I'm advised to get (by the
> uni), and books I see in shops are all "flowery"*.
> 
> The sort of thing I'm after is a book with a chapter devoted to Ada
> statements, one per page (or so), giving an explanation, clear syntax,
> a couple of examples and a list of related or similar statements. The
> statements should be listed in alphabetical order as well.
> 
> Any really useful pages to point browsers at would be useful as well, 2