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

[Jeffrey Carter <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org>]

On 07/06/2013 12:04 AM, Dufr wrote:
>
> a hobbiyst learner needs a lot of support, and from what I have seen Object Pascal (in the form of Free Pascal) has a much larger community of enthusiasts than Ada, with a very active forum.
> The Ada community consists mostly in highly-qualified professionals (engineers, scientists, etc), whose contributions are very valuable, BUT perhaps not so useful for a hobbyist.
> By simply comparing this Ada Google Group with Free Pascal / Lazarus forums, one can quickly see that, apart from being much more active, the Free Pascal
> forum has myriads of posts of a very practical nature (tons of code snippets, problems and solutions, etc). In short, one really gets one's hands dirty quick with the Free Pascal's forum.
> By contrast, the posts on this Google Group are, one the whole, much more technical and abstract. This is not to find fault with them, of course.

The worse the language, the greater the number of posts it will have giving code 
examples and problems and solutions. A poorly designed language has more 
"gotchas" and inconsistencies, leading to a greater proportion of its users 
encountering difficulties with the language and posting problems encountered, 
and a greater number of posts illustrating useful "tricks" needed to use the 
language successfully.

Ada, being one of the best designed languages, has far fewer such posts. One can 
use the posts about problems encountered that recur frequently to identify 
features that should not be in the language and should be avoided. They mostly 
concern anonymous access types and programming by extension.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Every sperm is sacred."
Monty Python's the Meaning of Life
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