Re: Dynamic array allocation and STL equivalents?

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

bdbryant@mail.utexas.edu (Bobby D. Bryant) writes:

> On Fri, 11 Feb 2005, brian.b.mcguinness@lmco.com wrote:
> 
> > Back in the mid 1980s, out of curiosity I bought books about a number
> > of programming languages, including LISP and Forth.  One of these books
> > was a turquoise and white paperback about Ada by J.G.P. Barnes.

Barnes has also written books about Ada 95.  And he's currently
writing some articles on the new Ada 2005.

>...During
> > a summer vacation trip, I read the Barnes book while riding for hours
> > down highways in the car.  I was impressed with features such as being
> > able to overload operators for newly defined types, the exception
> > handling facilities, and the ability to write constants in a wide
> > variety of bases.  My impression was that this was Pascal done right.
> 
> Pascal pretty much _was_ "done right", given its pedagogical purpose.

Hmm...  Even back in those days, I would want to teach students about
encapsulation and information hiding, which Pascal doesn't support very
well.  And why should students have to deal with static-sized strings?
And why have dangling "else", instead of if/else/end if?  And why does
Read summarily kill the program on bad input?  Shouldn't students learn
about proper error recovery?  Separate compilation?  Etc.

My impression of Ada in 198x was the same as the original poster --
"Pascal done right".

> Others have already answered this, but I'd like to add that your book
> is apparently pre- Ada95, so you may want to get a newer book, or at
> least consult some on-line sources to see what has changed.

Yes.

> Here's the Ada95 reference manual:
> http://www.adahome.com/rm95/rm9x-toc.html, though it is probably easier
> to learn from a book.

Yes.  As one of the authors of that manual, I definitely agree it's
not an easy way to learn the language.  Read a textbook instead.

- Bob