Re: Object Pascal vs Ada -- which is better for a hobbyist?

[Lucretia <laguest9000@googlemail.com>]

On Thursday, 4 July 2013 07:59:26 UTC+1, Dufr  wrote:
> Which is better for an amateur programmer, Object Pascal or Ada?
> 
> My worry about Ada is that it will entail too much overhead in terms of learning, because of the strict rules, whereas programming in Object Pascal is said to be easier. Or, at least, this is what I have heard.
> 
> Is my understanding correct?
> 
> Is there a reason why I may want to prefer Ada over Object Pascal (again, remembering that I am just a hobbyist)?

Here's how I see things...

1) Pascal was developed as a learning language, like BASIC. Once you get to grips with both Pascal and BASIC you have nowhere else to go to create more advanced programs without going with a non-standard dialect which won't work with any other compilers, if you need to.

2) Both Pascal and BASIC are dead.

Going back to 1, yeah there's FreePascal/Lazarus which implements Delphi, but even Borland doesn't support Delphi anymore and like I said, it's a non-standard implementation. Standards are worth something.

I would say that Ada could easily take the place as a learning language like Pascal, the difference being, you have somewhere to go when you want more complex applications.

Is Ada more complex than Pascal, in some ways yes it is, but not by much. Pascal doesn't have generics for a start and you will start to learn those quite quickly with Ada; same for separate compilation.

Give Ada a go, you won't regret it, apart from compiler bugs (or Internal Compiler Errors - ICE's). Download GNAT and start messing about with Ada 2012.

Luke.