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=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,4871bb700d475964 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-06-09 08:23:11 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!headwall.stanford.edu!news-out.nibble.net!news-in.nibble.net!btnet-peer0!btnet!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!diablo.netcom.net.uk!netcom.net.uk!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!opentransit.net!proxad.net!latulipe.staff.proxad.net!news.uic.asso.fr!enst!enst.fr!not-for-mail From: Michal Nowak Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: an interested business-oriented programmer Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2001 17:19:12 +0200 Organization: ENST, France Sender: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org Message-ID: References: <20010607153207.573AE1926F@ada.eu.org> Reply-To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: marvin.enst.fr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT X-Trace: avanie.enst.fr 992099839 42517 137.194.161.2 (9 Jun 2001 15:17:19 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@enst.fr NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 15:17:19 +0000 (UTC) To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org Return-Path: In-reply-to: <20010607153207.573AE1926F@ada.eu.org> X-Mailer: Calypso Version 2.40.40 Errors-To: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.4 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: comp.lang.ada mail<->news gateway List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Errors-To: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:8491 Date: 2001-06-09T17:19:12+02:00 In <3B1EAAB4.5C86F53D@lmtas.lmco.com> Gary Scott wrote: >If you want to get STUDENTS trained in Ada, then you've got to make it >easy for them. They're NOT going to accept a basic command line tool >set environment to any great extent (sure a few 'geeks' will). I partially disagree. I'm still a student, just started learning Ada. That't true - make Ada easy for students. But, I think, the most important thing is to teach us thinking in Ada (I purposely refer to Bruce Eckel's book "Thinking in Java"). I had just two lectures on Ada, during which I was shown introdunction, mostly taken form "Ada for C++ programmers" from Adahome. This led to mispopularity of Ada among many of my friends. They tried nearly automatically translate (or rather transform) their C++ - style ideas into Ada code. And it didn't work. It didn't work even for so initial problems concerning strings and classes. Some of they complained that this is strange language, because of above, and that they will not use in future. Some of them wrote just simple programs, just to pass projects, get back into C++/Java and forget about Ada. I nearly did the same, but synchronization mechanisms and clarity of code interested me. I thought, that maybe I will find something interesting, and even if I will not write later programs in Ada, I may find some information useful in project. I started to search, found some documents and started to learning Ada from basics. I do not regret it. During writing Ada programs I must just switch from C-thinking to Ada-thinking and everything is much simpler. Command line tools: what can be simpler and easier than write: gnatmake hello.adb, or gnatdist hello.cfg And in this case you have control over all of your code and compilation process. Moreover, source code is more portable. No extra environment- dependent variables. For me it is the easiest way to compile programs. Mike Nowak