New to ada, a few questions

New to ada, a few questions

[Stephane Jolicoeur]

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Hello,
I am a strong python programmer that is looking for a compiled language to
complement my tool chest. I tried C but those pointers are an annoyance, I
tried C++ but there to the pointers and it's OO weirdness kicked in. Then  I
stumbled on an Ada tutorial, I dislike the Pascal-like coding style but
there seems to be no pointer and it can be compiled to native byte code !
 I would like to know, what good books are there for learning ada ( some
sort of tutorial/reference book). How "fast" is compiled Ada code by this I
mean is it like C/C++ or more like Java? I read that it is possible to
interface Ada with C? How is this done? Can I use say stdio.h in an Ada
program? How about interfacing with C++ or objective C? Are there any GUI
librairies (windows, BSD, Mac OS X)? Has any Ada compiler been made to
compile code for microcontrollers ( PIC, 68hc11, etc )? How does the
threading work? I think this should suffice for a first post.

Best Regards

Stephane



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Re: New to ada, a few questions

[Jim Rogers]

Stephane Jolicoeur wrote:

> *** post for FREE via your newsreader at post.newsfeed.com ***
> 
> Hello,
> I am a strong python programmer that is looking for a compiled language to
> complement my tool chest. I tried C but those pointers are an annoyance, I
> tried C++ but there to the pointers and it's OO weirdness kicked in. Then  I
> stumbled on an Ada tutorial, I dislike the Pascal-like coding style but
> there seems to be no pointer and it can be compiled to native byte code !
>  I would like to know, what good books are there for learning ada ( some
> sort of tutorial/reference book). How "fast" is compiled Ada code by this I
> mean is it like C/C++ or more like Java? I read that it is possible to
> interface Ada with C? How is this done? Can I use say stdio.h in an Ada
> program? How about interfacing with C++ or objective C? Are there any GUI
> librairies (windows, BSD, Mac OS X)? Has any Ada compiler been made to
> compile code for microcontrollers ( PIC, 68hc11, etc )? How does the
> threading work? I think this should suffice for a first post.
> 


First the short answer: visit www.adapower.com for Ada online books and
tutorials.

More detailed answers follow:

* Ada code is as fast as C or C++ code.


* Ada provides calling conventions and several useful conversions
   for calling functions compiled in C. You cannot use stdio.h in Ada.
   Ada does not understand C source syntax, and Ada has no standard
   preprocessor.

* Interfacing with C++ or objective C is possible. The simplest way
   is to treat them both as C programs. More complex approaches are
   somewhat compiler specific.

* There are several GUI bindings for Ada. The GtkAda binding is
   very useful and portable.

* Ada is available for embedded systems, but not for 8 bit microcontrollers.

* Ada "threading" works very well. It is actually defined in the more
   general terms of concurrent programming, and is often implemented
   using threads. Compared to Java, Ada's concurrency model is extremely
   robust and sophisticated.

I hope you have pleasant experiences learning Ada.

Jim Rogers

Re: New to ada, a few questions

[akhar]

> * Ada provides calling conventions and several useful conversions
>    for calling functions compiled in C. You cannot use stdio.h in Ada.
>    Ada does not understand C source syntax, and Ada has no standard
>    preprocessor.
this means I have to link to  a DLL ?

> * Interfacing with C++ or objective C is possible. The simplest way
>    is to treat them both as C programs. More complex approaches are
>    somewhat compiler specific.
same thing here?

> * Ada is available for embedded systems, but not for 8 bit
microcontrollers.
where ca I get more info on this?

> * Ada "threading" works very well. It is actually defined in the more
>    general terms of concurrent programming, and is often implemented
>    using threads. Compared to Java, Ada's concurrency model is extremely
>    robust and sophisticated.
Tell me more about concurrent programming, how does it interface to the OS
threading model. I read this is the main reason it is used for realtime
applications , but cannot find any tutorials.

> I hope you have pleasant experiences learning Ada.
Me too

> Jim Rogers
>

Sephane

Re: New to ada, a few questions

[chris.danx]

akhar wrote:
>>* Ada provides calling conventions and several useful conversions
>>   for calling functions compiled in C. You cannot use stdio.h in Ada.
>>   Ada does not understand C source syntax, and Ada has no standard
>>   preprocessor.
> 
> this means I have to link to  a DLL ?

no, you can write a binding to stdio functions, import them then link 
the object file in.  How to do the link depends on the compilers 
involved, so you'd need to read the docs.

You don't have to use stdio though, Ada has it's own io functions which 
are usually just as good.

Try the lovelace tutorial, it's a nice introduction for someone who's 
already programmed before!  You can find it via http://www.adapower.com


Chris

Re: New to ada, a few questions

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <n9C39.216$PE6.18962@wagner.videotron.net>, "akhar" <akhar@videotron.ca> writes:
>> * Ada provides calling conventions and several useful conversions
>>    for calling functions compiled in C. You cannot use stdio.h in Ada.
>>    Ada does not understand C source syntax, and Ada has no standard
>>    preprocessor.
> this means I have to link to  a DLL ?

No, but you have to compile each module with its own compiler (C or Ada)
and then link them together.  If you have reason to prefer to use some
mechanism like a DLL/Shared Object/Shareable image you can do that too.
Ada compilers are just like any other compiler in most cases for the
top-down view -- they take in text files and put out object files.

>> * Interfacing with C++ or objective C is possible. The simplest way
>>    is to treat them both as C programs. More complex approaches are
>>    somewhat compiler specific.
> same thing here?

Same thing as what ?

>> * Ada is available for embedded systems, but not for 8 bit
> microcontrollers.
> where ca I get more info on this?

Try http://www.adapower.com

>> * Ada "threading" works very well. It is actually defined in the more
>>    general terms of concurrent programming, and is often implemented
>>    using threads. Compared to Java, Ada's concurrency model is extremely
>>    robust and sophisticated.
> Tell me more about concurrent programming, how does it interface to the OS
> threading model. I read this is the main reason it is used for realtime
> applications , but cannot find any tutorials.

If your OS has a threading model, it interfaces to it in any fashion
that can achieve the specified behavior from the Ada Reference Manual,
but typically it is better to learn this from a textbook.  There are
Ada compilers that depend entirely on OS services for their tasking,
and there are Ada compilers that are entirely independent of OS tasking
services.  The emphasis in Ada is that your source code is portable
between various operating systems and various compilers on those operating
systems because your tasking/threading/multiprogramming support is a
guarantee from the Ada implementation without you having to be concerned
with how to deal with the operating system.

Re: New to ada, a few questions

[Keith Thompson]

Stephane Jolicoeur <s.jol@jol-tech.net> writes:
> *** post for FREE via your newsreader at post.newsfeed.com ***
> 
> Hello,
> I am a strong python programmer that is looking for a compiled language to
> complement my tool chest. I tried C but those pointers are an annoyance, I
> tried C++ but there to the pointers and it's OO weirdness kicked in. Then  I
> stumbled on an Ada tutorial, I dislike the Pascal-like coding style but
> there seems to be no pointer and it can be compiled to native byte code !
>  I would like to know, what good books are there for learning ada ( some
> sort of tutorial/reference book). How "fast" is compiled Ada code by this I
> mean is it like C/C++ or more like Java? I read that it is possible to
> interface Ada with C? How is this done? Can I use say stdio.h in an Ada
> program? How about interfacing with C++ or objective C? Are there any GUI
> librairies (windows, BSD, Mac OS X)? Has any Ada compiler been made to
> compile code for microcontrollers ( PIC, 68hc11, etc )? How does the
> threading work? I think this should suffice for a first post.

Ada does have pointers; it calls them access types.  They're not
needed nearly as often as they are in C.  For example, if you want to
pass a parameter by reference, you just pass it; there's no need to
use a pointer type.  Array types are array types.  The bounds of an
array are fixed when the object is created, but they can be determined
at run time; again, there's no need to use pointers.  Even when you do
use pointers, it's much easier to do so safely.  Pointer arithmetic, a
major source of undefined behavior in C, is not built into the
language, and is almost never necessary.  <metaphor>Of course you can
shoot yourself in the foot, but it's harder to do so; the safety is on
by default and you have to say "I want to turn off the safety now, and
I know it's dangerous." before you disable it.</metaphor>

No, you can't use <stdio.h> directly (Ada doesn't grok C syntax), but
Ada does have good facilities for interfacing to other languages, with
predefined support for C, Fortran, and Cobol, and compiler-specific
support for C++.  Of course, Ada has its own I/O packages, so there's
seldom any need to interface to the facilities defined in <stdio.h>.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@cts.com  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center           <*>  <http://www.sdsc.edu/~kst>
Schroedinger does Shakespeare: "To be *and* not to be"

Re: New to ada, a few questions

[David C. Hoos, Sr.]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Thompson" <kst@cts.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
To: <comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>
Sent: August 05, 2002 6:56 PM
Subject: Re: New to ada, a few questions


> Stephane Jolicoeur <s.jol@jol-tech.net> writes:
> > *** post for FREE via your newsreader at post.newsfeed.com ***
> >
> > Hello,
> > I am a strong python programmer that is looking for a compiled language to
> > complement my tool chest. I tried C but those pointers are an annoyance, I
> > tried C++ but there to the pointers and it's OO weirdness kicked in. Then
I
> > stumbled on an Ada tutorial, I dislike the Pascal-like coding style but
> > there seems to be no pointer and it can be compiled to native byte code !
> >  I would like to know, what good books are there for learning ada ( some
> > sort of tutorial/reference book). How "fast" is compiled Ada code by this
I
> > mean is it like C/C++ or more like Java? I read that it is possible to
> > interface Ada with C? How is this done? Can I use say stdio.h in an Ada
> > program? How about interfacing with C++ or objective C? Are there any GUI
> > librairies (windows, BSD, Mac OS X)? Has any Ada compiler been made to
> > compile code for microcontrollers ( PIC, 68hc11, etc )? How does the
> > threading work? I think this should suffice for a first post.
>
> Ada does have pointers; it calls them access types.  They're not
> needed nearly as often as they are in C.  For example, if you want to
> pass a parameter by reference, you just pass it; there's no need to
> use a pointer type.  Array types are array types.  The bounds of an
> array are fixed when the object is created, but they can be determined
> at run time; again, there's no need to use pointers.  Even when you do
> use pointers, it's much easier to do so safely.  Pointer arithmetic, a
> major source of undefined behavior in C, is not built into the
> language,

If pointer arithic is not built into the language, how do you explain
paragraph B.3.2 (1) which says:

1 The generic package Interfaces.C.Pointers allows the Ada programmer to
perform C-style operations on pointers. It includes an access type Pointer,
Value functions that dereference a Pointer and deliver the designated
array, several pointer arithmetic operations, and �copy� procedures that
copy the contents of a source pointer into the array designated by a
destination pointer. As in C, it treats an object Ptr of type Pointer as a
pointer to the first element of an array, so that for example, adding 1 to
Ptr yields a pointer to the second element of the array.

> and is almost never necessary. <metaphor>Of course you can
> shoot yourself in the foot, but it's harder to do so; the safety is on
> by default and you have to say "I want to turn off the safety now, and
> I know it's dangerous." before you disable it.</metaphor>
>
> No, you can't use <stdio.h> directly (Ada doesn't grok C syntax), but
> Ada does have good facilities for interfacing to other languages, with
> predefined support for C, Fortran, and Cobol, and compiler-specific
> support for C++.  Of course, Ada has its own I/O packages, so there's
> seldom any need to interface to the facilities defined in <stdio.h>.
>
> --
> Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst@cts.com  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
> San Diego Supercomputer Center           <*>  <http://www.sdsc.edu/~kst>
> Schroedinger does Shakespeare: "To be *and* not to be"
> _______________________________________________
> comp.lang.ada mailing list
> comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
> http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada
>
>

Re: New to ada, a few questions

[Adrian Hoe]

akhar wrote:

>>* Ada provides calling conventions and several useful conversions
>>   for calling functions compiled in C. You cannot use stdio.h in Ada.
>>   Ada does not understand C source syntax, and Ada has no standard
>>   preprocessor.
>>
> this means I have to link to  a DLL ?
> 
> 
>>* Interfacing with C++ or objective C is possible. The simplest way
>>   is to treat them both as C programs. More complex approaches are
>>   somewhat compiler specific.
>>
> same thing here?
> 
> 
>>* Ada is available for embedded systems, but not for 8 bit
>>
> microcontrollers.
> where ca I get more info on this?
> 
> 
>>* Ada "threading" works very well. It is actually defined in the more
>>   general terms of concurrent programming, and is often implemented
>>   using threads. Compared to Java, Ada's concurrency model is extremely
>>   robust and sophisticated.
>>
> Tell me more about concurrent programming, how does it interface to the OS
> threading model. I read this is the main reason it is used for realtime
> applications , but cannot find any tutorials.
> 
> 
>>I hope you have pleasant experiences learning Ada.
>>
> Me too
> 
> 
>>Jim Rogers
>>
>>
> 
> Sephane
> 
> 
> 

For a list of books, visit http://adrianhoe.com.

-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
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