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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: border1.nntp.dca3.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca3.giganews.com!border4.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!ottix-news.ottix.net!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!nntp.TheWorld.com!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Robert A Duff Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Object Pascal vs Ada -- which is better for a hobbyist? Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 17:39:52 -0400 Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01.theworld.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: pcls7.std.com 1373060392 9612 192.74.137.71 (5 Jul 2013 21:39:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@TheWorld.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 21:39:52 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.1008 (Gnus v5.10.8) Emacs/21.3 (irix) Cancel-Lock: sha1:4KwUpgSzrqE9qamBgt1jfzpo+Sg= X-Original-Bytes: 2649 Xref: number.nntp.dca.giganews.com comp.lang.ada:182292 Date: 2013-07-05T17:39:52-04:00 List-Id: Dufr writes: > Which is better for an amateur programmer, Object Pascal or Ada? Ada, for all sorts of reasons. Better module system, better type system, better syntax, full-coverage rules for case statements and aggregates, etc. Also, non-technical reasons: better availability of compilers, more active user community, uniformity across platforms. All that goes for hobbyists and professionals. > My worry about Ada is that it will entail too much overhead in terms > of learning, because of the strict rules, whereas programming in > Object Pascal is said to be easier. Or, at least, this is what I have > heard. Is my understanding correct? Strict rules do not make a programming language hard to learn. Just the opposite, in fact. If you don't know the rules, the compiler tells you, and you learn as you go along. That can be frustrating, but for me it's a lot less frustrating than debugging! It is true that learning all of Ada is much harder than learning all of Object Pascal. But that's OK -- you don't have to learn all of Ada to do useful stuff, and you certainly don't have to learn it all at once. Ignore tasking unless you want to do concurrency, and even then ignore rendezvous. Learn how to raise exceptions, but not how to handle them. Ignore all of the Annexes, except for parts of Annex A. Ignore chapter 13. And as others have said, learn it from a textbook or on-line tutorial. Don't approach the Ada Reference Manual until you know Ada. (One exception: for the predefined libraries, Annex A of the Ada RM is fairly readable.) - Bob