Re: Considering taking an ADA course at uni

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 01:31:54 +0000, Zork wrote:

> Hi, im currently enrolled in a masters and noticed a "software engineering
> and ADA" course available this coming semester. I actually didnt know
> anything about ada up until a day ago when I noticed this course on offer. I
> have previous experience in c++, fortran, and java. I am intending on doing
> a project/thesis later on into the course on genetic algorithms. Would
> anyone recommend this ada course? Is ada really that good? Will it help me
> become a better programmer? (i know these are very general questions). The
> course description is as follows:
> 
> ------------
> This course introduces the programming language ADA. Advanced functions and
> procedures. Parameter passing in, out, in out. Problem solving through
> modularisation. ADA packages. The concept of information hiding. Top-down
> and bottom-up development and testing. Private declarations. Problem solving
> by abstraction. Private data types and user-defined operations. Problem
> solving in real-time systems, tasks, inter-task communication, task
> synchronisation. Assumed Knowledge: ACSC704 Introduction to Programming or
> equivalent.

The above looks a bit old-fashioned (Ada 83?). There are some very
important features of Ada left:

1. OO, tagged types, class-wide types, primitive operations, class-wide
ones. Ada's approach is quite different to C++, and more advanced, IMHO.

2. genericity, known in C++ as templates.

3. protected objects (a complementary to task rendevous view on
synchronization).

4. various numeric types

--
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de