Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Michal Nowak <vinnie@inetia.pl>]

>Many of my colleagues haven't heard about Ada and it's a vain effort to 
>find something about it in our bookshops.

As I remeber, there was book titled "Ada95" published by Helion two 
or three years ago. Maybe thay have it stored somewhere, I don't think
it was selling well. Even if you ask computer scientist here what is Ada,
they will faster match it with song title "Ada, to nie wypada", than with
programming language :-( I saw this book, but I don't have it. Nearly all
subjects from this book you will find in free online resources, for 
example:
ADA 95: THE CRAFT OF OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING
by John English, available at:
http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je/adacraft/

and
Object Oriented Software in Ada 95 Second Edition
by Michael Smith, available at:
http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/language/ada/

If you want printed book, I think that "Ada as a Second Language"
by Norman Cohen is a good positon. Short review is available at:
http://www.adahome.com/Resources/Books/ada95reviews.html/


>Not mentioning the employers.

Aaaaarrgh. I haven't find any Ada related job here yet. Everywhere "Visual
Basic, C++, Java required..."

>But I'll keep learning and playing with it, there has to be some reason 
>why big and critical systems are built in Ada, right?

Yea. When I started to write in Ada, I realized that error rate noticeably
decreased in compare to C++. It is quite easy to make a mistake between 
== and = or && and & in C. At my work lots of time I spent findind bugs
in C-like (C++/PHP/Java) code in software written by my predecessors. 
After that I'm sick when I see C-like code. 
It is also harder to write messy code, especailly if get familiar with 
"Ada Rationale" (http://www.adaic.org/standards/ada95.html/)

Happy Ada programming,
Mike
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