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=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: guerby@gnat.com (Laurent Guerby) Subject: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal? Date: 1996/07/21 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 169318687 sender: guerby@schonberg.cs.nyu.edu references: organization: New York University reply-to: guerby@gnat.com newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-07-21T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Robert> Well of course, Andy may be a brilliant exception, but most Robert> people who learn "Ada in a couple of weeks" on their own with Robert> a background like his tend to write just terrible Ada, having Robert> completely misunderstood the critical use of abstraction, the Robert> right way to use exceptions, the right way to use generics, I would say it depends of what what they were looking for in learning Ada. If one (C/Fortran/Basic) programmer feels that his language is not enough to build in a satisfactory way good code and is looking for new SE principle in learning Ada, then there's a chance that the misunderstanding won't be that sytematic. And remember that the very good and *free* Ada material is available all over the net. Example: the Ada Quality & Style is full of very interesting discussions (pros & cons, more interesting than guidelines most of the time) on good use of Ada features. (Aren't you a reviewer of this document? ;-). URL: http://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/AdaIC/standards/Welcome.html (or something near this URL) Robert> and probably I would guess that they only know a small subset Robert> of the language (typically not including the annexes for Robert> example). The advantage of the annexes in Ada 95 is that you don't have to learn them if you don't use them, that's not "subsetting". I guess the right example and common case is learning Ada without tasking. (Knowing all Ada 95 annexes means that you know: Annex A: all the core standard libraries (IO, Strings, ...) Annex B: all of C, Fortran, COBOL languages Annex C: all of your machine (interruptions, assembly) Annex D: all of priority scheduling (RMS, Ceiling, ...) Annex E: all of distributed systems programming Annex F: all of COBOL pictures strings editing and decimal arithmetic Annex G: all of numerics (accuracy, complex arithmetic) Annex H: all of safety critical system concerns (implementation choices) Annex J: all of Ada 83 obsolescent features ... definitly a large amount of knowledge and experience!) Robert> Learning a language is more than learning where the semicolons Robert> go! Right (since most languages come with a philosophy of programming, especially Ada in the realm of SE). -- Laurent Guerby , Team Ada. "Use the Source, Luke. The Source will be with you, always (GPL)."