Re: is ada dead?

["chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com>]

"tyler spivey" <tspivey8@home.com> wrote in message
news:ko517.630989$166.13106618@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com...
>
> is ada dead?

No.

> is it only used in department of defense?

No.

> is it easy/hard to learn?

Easy.  Get John English's book "Ada 95: the craft of object-orientated design".
It's the best book for someone wanting to learn Ada imo (doesn't matter whether
you know another language, or a complete beginner, it's the business).  Norman
H. Cohens book (2nd edition) is a good follow on.

> will it die soon?

No.

Ada 95 is used and taught in at least the first three years at Glasgow Uni.
When we started they told us the reason they teach it is because it

a) promotes good software design

b) allows rapid development due, in part, to the large number of compile time
checks

c) makes it easier to maintain software


All seem to be true, my development time for apps has been reduced
significantly, and I do find it easier to fix broken code than with Pascal and
C, (it has never been due to dubious statements (like casts and so on) which
were major sources of irritation in C).

There has been a lot of discussion about Ada's popularity, with most ppl
agreeing Ada doesn't have the slice of the pie it deserves.  However, Adas
popularity is growing but I think it's being hindered by the DoD connection.
When I went to see the Uni, I asked the CS recruitment officer which programming
language they taught and she told me Ada.  She then said "it's used by the
United States DoD" or words to those effect.

This made me question it's relevance to me.  I thought that the language would
have capabilities unrelated to the projects I work on.  I couldn't have been
more wrong.  It would have been better if she'd have said something like "parts
of projects like AdaOS or seti@home have been written in it", but that was two
years ago.  Maybe this is just me.



Chris