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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.224.74.72 with SMTP id t8mr2405153qaj.4.1378292474877; Wed, 04 Sep 2013 04:01:14 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.49.98.162 with SMTP id ej2mr9082qeb.10.1378292474860; Wed, 04 Sep 2013 04:01:14 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!usenet.blueworldhosting.com!feeder01.blueworldhosting.com!npeer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!j7no245357qai.0!news-out.google.com!p7ni567qas.0!nntp.google.com!j7no245348qai.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2013 04:01:14 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <52270a8c$0$6583$9b4e6d93@newsspool3.arcor-online.net> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=140.78.186.245; posting-account=EGQ3wAoAAABMlvcviStPLgY0shtgbvUX NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.78.186.245 References: <9ec51e40-081f-4ec7-b17f-7c73dbdcd10a@googlegroups.com> <52270a8c$0$6583$9b4e6d93@newsspool3.arcor-online.net> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: Subject: Re: How (or Where?) to get started on Ada? (Properly) From: e.s.harney@gmail.com Injection-Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 11:01:14 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Received-Bytes: 3964 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:17102 Date: 2013-09-04T04:01:14-07:00 List-Id: Thank you for your replies and the links! So Ada95 books/resources are stil= l a good place to get started for learning the language today then? > writing bindings to function libraries (code written in > C, say) is a concept from the 1970s. Well, I'm only looking at it since Ada seems to be missing things like wide= ly-used/extensively-tested HTTP or crypto libraries. So I'll have to figure= out a way to using things like curl or openssl from Ada. I'm not sure if s= omething more complex than simple function is really necessary for this. Either way though, my point was that Barnes' book (judging by the table of = contents on Amazon) does not seem to concern itself with how to get your pr= ogram to do something useful. My guess is that in order to do so it would p= robably need another 200-300 pages explaining how to get your program to in= teract with the rest of the world. > ISO 10646 is mandatory for > current Ada, so UTF-8 won't be a problem. That is interesting. What I had found through Google was this http://common= s.ada.cx/Unicode which isn't really that helpful.=20 How does Ada represent its strings internally? (Or more specifically, what = character set do the standard library functions for processing strings assu= me/expect?). Strings seem to be a hairy detail in many languages. Go uses uses utf8 ever= ywhere; C has utf8 mostly these days but there's still things like wchar (a= nd associated w* string function) around; Java uses UTF-16 and surrogate pa= irs; Python had something similar in version 2, but changed it to being ful= ly-transparent (switches between 1-4 byte representation as needed) in vers= ion 3, and presents users only with characters; etc. Is this covered by the reference manual for Ada? On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 12:25:24 PM UTC+2, G.B. wrote: > On 04.09.13 11:14, e.s.h...@gmail.com wrote: >=20 > > I'm not sure of how helpful it will be in covering all details that are= relevant to writing useful software these days (things like utf8, interfac= ing with C, etc.). >=20 >=20 >=20 > That would depend on what "these days" turns out to be; >=20 > writing bindings to function libraries (code written in >=20 > C, say) is a concept from the 1970s. Not surprisingly, >=20 > that's a technique present in Ada's definition (LRM B.3, >=20 > B.4, and B.5). Still used. ISO 10646 is mandatory for >=20 > current Ada, so UTF-8 won't be a problem. >=20 >=20 >=20 > "These days", on PC hardware, chances are that binding >=20 > objects/types is more adequate than binding functions, >=20 > even on GNU/Linux. >=20 > Actually, Ada compilers for .NET or for the JVM do >=20 > just that in a natural way using tagged types.