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=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Thread: 109fba,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Thread: 115aec,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Thread: f43e6,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,gid109fba,gid115aec,gidf43e6,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!news1.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!feed.news.tiscali.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!newsmm00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news.t-online.com!not-for-mail From: Matthias Kaeppler Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.realtime,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Teaching new tricks to an old dog (C++ -->Ada) Date: Sat, 05 Mar 2005 16:03:48 +0100 Organization: T-Online Message-ID: References: <4229bad9$0$1019$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au> Reply-To: nospam@digitalraid.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news.t-online.com 1110034888 00 9322 85XYrgT6AOzeddj 050305 15:01:28 X-Complaints-To: usenet-abuse@t-online.de X-ID: bHTqq-ZOoeTjcD9Hh0ZXddmcLgBsUdsynbkYwN75rvZ6R3jJAKCN67 User-Agent: Debian Thunderbird 1.0 (X11/20050116) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en In-Reply-To: <4229bad9$0$1019$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au> Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:8645 comp.lang.c++:44160 comp.realtime:933 comp.software-eng:4464 Date: 2005-03-05T16:03:48+01:00 List-Id: Turamnvia Suouriviaskimatta wrote: > I 'm following various posting in "comp.lang.ada, comp.lang.c++ , > comp.realtime, comp.software-eng" groups regarding selection of a > programming language of C, C++ or Ada for safety critical real-time > applications. The majority of expert/people recommend Ada for safety > critical real-time applications. I've many years of experience in C/C++ (and > Delphi) but no Ada knowledge. > > May I ask if it is too difficult to move from C/C++ to Ada? > What is the best way of learning Ada for a C/C++ programmer? > > > It hasn't a lot in common with C-based languages. Its origin is in Pascal and Algol. I had to wite an article about Ada just recently while I had never worked with it before. I didn't find it too hard to get into it, but I don't consier myself "knowing" Ada well, either (only worked a couple of weeks with it). I didn't like the OO facilities, it feels like OO was stomped into the language just to keep up with modern OO languages (actually, that's exactly what happened with Ada-95). Ada is also -- compared to e.g. C++ -- extremely limiting in terms of flexibility (which is a good thing for safety critical environments I guess). Ada has a very interesting type system, which e.g. allows you to define your own fundamental types, e.g. fixed point types (you can even define how many digits it may have etc). Ada also has generics, but is primarily based on data abstraction in terms of data structures (called 'records' in Ada). Overall I'd say your C++ knowledge is pretty useless when you learn Ada, but a general, fundamental experience with computer programming is always good enough to get into a new language relatively quick IMO. -- Matthias Kaeppler