Re: Advice on best environment for Ada on Windows

["J-P. Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr>]

Le 13/02/2020 à 06:13, Rick Newbie a écrit :
> I'm new to Ada and slowly getting into my first small programs.
Welcome!

> The> question that arises soon after the first steps is that of the best
> working environment, so I wanted to hear what the regular Ada users work
> with.
> 
> So far I have identified three possible scenarios:
> 
> 1) GPS only. While GPS looks good it becomes rather fickle when you
> start working with it. The underlying Python stuff seems to be a
> constant source of trouble, some scripts that come with GPS are flat out
> buggy etc. While it is good to work with the project hierarchy and
> getting online help, the editor is simply not up to the job, not to
> mention the shaky interaction with external programs most notably gdb.
I am surprised by this statement. I use mainly GPS, emacs sometimes. I
have no problem with it. Are you using a recent version? There were some
issues with the early versions, but they are long gone.

Oh, and if you are a beginner, don't rush on the debugger (gdb or any
other one). With Ada, resorting to a debugger is very rare, and
justified only in complicated cases. The reason is that the strong
controls of the language make sure that what you write is what you
intended to write. Most problems are due to the logic, and you solve
logic problems by reasoning on your code, not with a debugger.

(I write Ada code all year long; I use the debugger 2-3 times a year,
and half of the time it doesn't help me)

-- 
J-P. Rosen
Adalog
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