Re: Textbooks vs. Reference Manuals (was: Need help bad!!!!! (sic))

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

iLarry says

"So did I learn Ada in a horribly inefficient manner, or does Ada 95
look straightforward due to having done object-oriented programming
before, or is Ada easier proportional to how many languages one has
used before, or is it easier if none of them was C ?"

There is a HUGE qualitative difference between the 83 RM and 95 RM in ease
of access for virtually everyone I ever met who has looked at both
documents in detail. Your experience with Ada 83 says nothing useful in
this discussion.

If you think that the Ada 95 RM is easy to read then either (a) you are
more brilliant than most of the rest of us or (b) you are fooling yourself!

The Ada 95 RM was deliberately written in considerably more precise and 
formal language than the Ada 83, this has its advantages and disadvantages,
but certainly accessibility is diminished. Try for example understanding
the rules for accessibility from the RM (even Bob Duff, who wrote them,
admits to some difficulty in interpreting them :-)

Similarly, if you really think you can easily understand the freezing
rules in ch 13 with no help, you are, as I say above, exceptional!