Re: Improving the first contact with Ada (was: GCC conflict on Ubuntu for mixed Ada/C++ project)

[Nicholas Collin Paul de Gloucester <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org>]

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I do not have time to follow this thread, but the quoted post made me
say to an outsider earlier than I was going to that trying to install
an Ada compiler would be a good idea. An excerpt of a report of how
this was not accomplished is quoted at the end of this post.

On Sun, 13 Jun 2010, zeta_no sent:
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|"On May 24, 6:45 pm, Ludovic Brenta <ludo...@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote:   |
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|> Which tutorials specifically did you use and which ones were bad?  How  |
|> would you suggest improving them?                                       |
|>                                                                         |
|> Also, do you actually _learn_ anything in tutorials?  I mean, do you    |
|> learn the underlying concepts, the basic knowledge that empowers you, or|
|> do you only skim the surface of things and remain dependent on "experts"|
|> to guide you?                                                           |
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|I should not point anyone by referring directly to their tutorials,       |
|but let say a came across a least 3 tutorials about concurrency           |
|programming with Ada that falls short of providing meaningful insight     |
|on the true capabilities of Ada in this field.  They present task,        |
|delays, guard etc but don't put all these concepts in 'imaging'           |
|situations, which resumes the power of the tasking model.  Those did      |
|not referred to typical uses of Ada, real problem solving that would      |
|enlighten its non naive usage.  The offer for tutorials that presents     |
|a classical introduction to Ada as being a general programming            |
|language, with enhanced capabilities (tasking model, real-time annex      |
|etc), is too important.  Many like me would benefit from more             |
|specialized tutorials, like let say a middle size embedded project,       |
|covering simply, many or all the main concepts provided by Ada and        |
|their sound usage.                                                        |
|                                                                          |
|To be sure you understand my point here, I see this type of tutorial      |
|as something that can be quite long and involving.  Rarely you can        |
|find that type of a document, that does not qualify as a book nor as a    |
|quick and dirty tutorial, as being organized halfway between a master     |
|thesis and a final year thesis.  It treats a known subject (compared      |
|with the master thesis), with solid knowledge and neat understanding      |
|(compared with some final year thesis).  These documents are great        |
|starters to light up curiosity and understanding to then permit           |
|austere books to sink in.                                                 |
|                                                                          |
|                                                                          |
|> It would be constructive if you could be more specific.  In particular I|
|> would be very interested in ideas on how to improve the first contact a |
|> newbie can have with Ada.                                               |
|                                                                          |
|Oh yes, I have ideas!                                                     |
|                                                                          |
|1. From my searches, it seems most people active with Ada are             |
|registered and composed article on Ada Programming (Wikibooks).  Tell     |
|me if I am wrong?"                                                        |
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I do not believe that this is true.

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|"2. A stable Ada home should be enforced (it confuses the newbs not to    |
|know where this month, this year you guys are)."                          |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Many members of the Ada community hate or are unpleasant to each
other.

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|"[..]                                                                     |
|                                                                          |
|iv. In the beginner section,                                              |
|a first tutorial for setting up Ada.  One windows, one Linux. (if on      |
|Linux GPS is crap, hide it, tutorial should be made to use emacs with     |
|Ada)                                                                      |
|                                                                          |
|                                                                          |
|>                                                                         |
|> --                                                                      |
|> Ludovic Brenta."                                                        |
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------|

This is a major problem. The aforementioned outsider reported:
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!Let's start with this site: "***http://www.ada-europe.org/***". It has manuals in the html format, which I haven't spotted the first time I checked it, but a .pdf version would be fine. A list of manuals published from springer can be found, but, at least at first sight I cannot find any reviews of the book, as I do in ACCU. In fact, the site has a link to a reference manual in .pdf version, but when I try to download it... "Oops! This page appears broken. HTTP 404 - File not found."                                                                                                                                        !
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!In this site a list of compilers can be found. Let's check the site: "***http://www.adacore.com/home/***". It is not obvious at first site that I must pay for it. Apparently from the site "***http://www.adalog.fr/freeada1.htm***" I can download a free compiler. Let's see... No, but from there I can reach a site: "***http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuada/files/***" where I can download a free compiler...I managed to download a compressed package, but now what? The help isn't really there and I suspect I can only install this compiler on Linux. If I have windows, I'm screwed...Ok, I've came across of four sites now...!
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!Ok, I give up...Let's try this one: "***http://www.adahome.com/***". I should not complain so much..."***http://www.adahome.com/Tutorials/Lovelace/lovelace.htm***" seems to be a tutorial for Ada...but it assumes I already now something of other languages, which is not a problem if I had tomething to write the code on and compile it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  !
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!I do not know if this was what you expected. My problem is not buying a book, but as I told you the Glassborow's (C++) book assumes I know nothing. It is true that perhaps I coul download Quincy in the net, but he clearly tells me how tu use it and my only concern is the code. If I have an equivalent book about Ada, I won't mind buying it. I never thought of it, but perhaps I can use Quincy to write Ada? I can try...                                                                                                                                                                                                            !
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Yours sincerely,
Nicholas Collin Paul de Gloucester