Re: New Software Forum

[Ingo Marks <nospam_adv@region-nord.de>]

Jim Rogers wrote:

> Yesterday I became aware of a new software forum starting up at
> http://www.crystalcode.com/codemage/MainMenu/Home/Welcome.php
> 
> I have had some conversations with the web master at this site. I find
> that they are open to articles and discussions concerning Ada. I plan
> to write some Ada articles for this site, and possibly help them
> maintain links to existing high quality Ada web sites.
> 
> I post this so that anyone else who wants to help me expose the
> wider development world to Ada can help out.
> 
> Jim Rogers

I have taken a look at 
http://www.crystalcode.com/codemage/MainMenu/Coding/Programming_Concepts/ConcurrentProgramming.php.

My first impression was that the Java code is clean and easy to read while 
the Ada code looks much too "chatty". I think most unbiased readers would 
think: "That's Ada? Oh how ugly! No thanks, I'll stay with Java.". 

Please don't misunderstand me: I reward your good work but I fear newcomers 
won't understand why Ada is so chatty compared with Java and could 
conclude: "When Ada code is so chatty Ada must be much more complicated 
than Java".

I would recommend syntax highlighting of Ada code. Syntax highlighted Ada 
looks wonderful in XEmacs (adamode). The same Ada code looks ugly if syntax 
highlighting is disabled (the code is much harder to read). There are some 
pretty good Ada to HTML source converters out there (f.ex Adabrowse). If 
colors are not wanted at Crystalcode then at least boldface and italic 
should be used to separate keywords and comments from the other source code 
(like printer output of Ada source).

I also would like to recommend to use shortcuts as most as possible. It 
is not wise to use Ada.Textio.Put_Line all the time because that deters 
newcomers who are interested in Ada. With Ada's rename command you can use 
a pretty short Print or something instead. That way you shorten the source 
and the code is much easier to read (almost Basic ;-) especially in short 
examples.

Regards,
Ingo