Newbie wanna Ada

Newbie wanna Ada

[Maciej Sobczak]

Hi,

I'm not new to programming and I got some experience in a couple of 
mainstream technologies.
Once upon a time I've read on a comp.lang.c++.moderated an interesting 
post. The whole thread was about 'safeness' of C++ and Java (such 
microwars arise quite often there) and few guys had enough courage to 
plug few words about Ada.

So, I want to try my hands at it.

I've downloaded some tutorials, happily installed GNAT on my Linux and 
warmed up my fingers... but before I start I got few newbie questions:

1. Is there a *usual* interface in Ada for socket-related operations?
2. Is there some more or less standard GUI lib? I've spot a Tcl/Tk 
binding somewhere:
     a. How does it work?
     b. Is it efficient?
     c. Does it require Tcl runtime installed to run programs?
     d. What about Qt, for example?
3. What is the level of portability of the source code? C++ suffers from 
the fact that many vendors dare to dump crap on the market with the C++ 
logo on the boxes. The result is that we have many different 'dialects' 
of this (standardised) language. What about Ada? If I write something 
for GNAT, can I assume that some imaginary Windows compiler will eat it?
4. What is the possibility of interfacing Ada with C (mainly - using C 
libs from Ada)? Is this made during the linking or in the spirit of 
Native Interfaces (like in Java)? For extremists - is it possible to 
call back some Ada procedure from the C function (possibly running in 
another thread)?
5. Is there a CORBA binding implemented for Ada?

Thanks for your time,

-- 
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.maciejsobczak.com

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[tmoran]

>1. Is there a *usual* interface in Ada for socket-related operations?
  There are several, but I wouldn't call any *the usual* interface.

>2. Is there some more or less standard GUI lib?
  Again, there are several, at various levels of abstraction, and
running on various OS's, but none is *the standard*.

>3. What is the level of portability of the source code?
  High as long as you don't lock yourself into vendor supplied "extras"
(or hit some bug in a particular compiler, of course).

>4. What is the possibility of interfacing Ada with C (mainly - using C
>libs from Ada)? Is this made during the linking ...
  Easy.  This is usually required when making OS calls, for instance.

>is it possible to call back some Ada procedure from the C function
  Certainly.  Again, OS callbacks are a standard example.

>(possibly running in another thread)?
  A callback is just a subroutine call, not a context switch.  But
the called Ada routine could of course do a rendezvous or start a
new task or ...

  Look around at www.adapower.com for links to examples of all the above.
Download (www.rrsoftware.com) Claw for examples, in the MS Windows
context, of all the above.  (Disclaimer: I'm one of the Claw developers)

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Tony Gair]

Hi tmoran,
    I had this problem myself as I wanted a separate interface for sockets
so I made a package for sending and listening to sockets where the user has
to specify where the messages are going. The interface consists of two tasks
and can send and receive types.
   I would have appreciated an inbuilt option though. I did have a play with
the examples given in the adasockets package on linux with the Gnat Compiler
and it worked ok, havn't used it actually on the interenet though, but I
have used internet sockets between two machines,

I would be very interested to hear of anyones success in connecting ada
sockets to programs such as Java. Anyone done this, please talk to me

Is there a substantial case for me writing a generic version....of this
package
and release it as opensource...........

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Marc A. Criley]

Tony Gair wrote:
> 
> I would be very interested to hear of anyones success in connecting ada
> sockets to programs such as Java. Anyone done this, please talk to me

I have been quite successful in having sockets in a native Ada program
connect to the socket implementation provided by the Java library.  The
native Ada application was the server, while the client was written in
Ada and compiled with JGNAT to produce Java Byte Code.  The client
implementation uses a number of Java library services, including sockets
and the GUI.

The socket package used by the client was based on AdaSockets with a
reimplemented package body.

Also, the project I was working on a couple years ago was developing a
Java client to connect to the Ada server, and the developer there was
doing everything directly in Java.

Marc A. Criley
Senior Staff Engineer
Quadrus Corporation
www.quadruscorp.com

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[tmoran]

>I would be very interested to hear of anyones success in connecting ada
>sockets to programs such as Java. Anyone done this, please talk to me
  There are plenty of examples of Ada programs using sockets connecting
to sockets in programs written in other languages.  A web server or web
spider (see www.adapower.com for links to examples), for instance.  A
socket is a socket, it doesn't matter what language is used to
manipulate it.  But if you are taling about a single, multi-language,
program where parts in each language can see and manipulate complex data
structures defined in code in the other language, that's a different
kettle of fish.

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Marin David Condic]

Here's another example of things that migh make good additions in some form
to an Ada standard library. The GUI part is a bit ambitious because of the
multiple possibilities on different platforms, but why not a standard Ada
sockets library component? It should be possible to come up with a package
interface that is implementable on just about anything that does TCP/IP,
right? Windows and Unix would probably cover the bulk of the demands.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


<tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message
news:Tv%B7.71100$gT6.35912088@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com...
> >1. Is there a *usual* interface in Ada for socket-related operations?
>   There are several, but I wouldn't call any *the usual* interface.
>
> >2. Is there some more or less standard GUI lib?
>   Again, there are several, at various levels of abstraction, and
> running on various OS's, but none is *the standard*.
>

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9rbnqb$dja$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>
>Here's another example of things that migh make good additions in some form
>to an Ada standard library. The GUI part is a bit ambitious because of the
>multiple possibilities on different platforms, but why not a standard Ada
>sockets library component? It should be possible to come up with a package
>interface that is implementable on just about anything that does TCP/IP,
>right? Windows and Unix would probably cover the bulk of the demands.

There is the issue that not every Ada platform has TCP/IP. That's not an
insurmountable problem, but it does mean that it would have to be in an optional
annex (Network Programming annex?)

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

No trees were killed in the sending of this message. 
However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Marin David Condic]

I've never had an issue with a standard that said: "You are not required to
implement X but if you *do* implement X, it must meet these criteria..."

I would envision an Ada Standard Component Library as having some nice
"core" set of features that provided things that (almost) any implementation
could provide. Extensions could be added that covered different problem
domains not unlike the annexes in the ARM. A vendor could easily say
"Branches A, B and C compile nicely and work with my stuff so I'll accept
them but branches D and E I'm leaving out..." The important thing being that
*if* you need a certain set of features, you can count on the interface to
those features being consistent.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:JzeC7.1464$xS6.2036@www.newsranger.com...
>
> There is the issue that not every Ada platform has TCP/IP. That's not an
> insurmountable problem, but it does mean that it would have to be in an
optional
> annex (Network Programming annex?)
>

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Michal Nowak]

>1. Is there a *usual* interface in Ada for socket-related operations?

I don't know what you mean by *usual*, but there are some bindings
for various OS-es.
Go directly to:
http://www.rfc1149.net/devel/adasockets
or http://www-inf.enst.fr/ANC/

You may try with
http://www.gnuada.org/rpms313p.html and look for rpms:
adasockets-0.1.14-1.i386.rpm
adasockets-runtime-0.1.14-1.i386.rpm

For some very useful networking stuff you should look at Ada Web Server
by Pascal Obry and Dmitriy Anisimkov from
http://libre.act-europe.fr/aws/
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry/contrib.html
or http://www.gnuada.org/rpms313p.html (for rpms)

If you do not need sockets but need networking programming get
GLADE (implementation of Annex E) from 
ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/gnat/
or http://www.gnuada.org/

>2. Is there some more or less standard GUI lib? I've spot a Tcl/Tk 
>binding somewhere:
>     a. How does it work?
>     b. Is it efficient?
>     c. Does it require Tcl runtime installed to run programs?
>     d. What about Qt, for example?

I have not played with GtkAda, but it should be possible to write 
OS indpendent code.
http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/

For Windows only there is a Claw (http://www.rrsoftware.com/)
or Dawid Botton's GWindows (http://www.adapower.com/gwindows/)
or JEWL by John English (http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je/jewl/)

>3. What is the level of portability of the source code?

If you will not use compiler specific functions (portability between
compilers) or OS specific bindigs (for example Claw is a Windows binding
and code using it will not run under Linux) everything should be OK.

>4. What is the possibility of interfacing Ada with C (mainly - using C 
>libs from Ada)? 

Ada Language Reference Manual (download from 
http://www.adaic.org/standards/ada95.html/)
Annex B  Interfacing to other languages,
particularly: B.3 Interfacing with C

>5. Is there a CORBA binding implemented for Ada?

Yes, for example AdaBroker,
http://adabroker.eu.org/
http://www.gnuada.org/rpms313p.html

I heard also about GNACK - the GNU Ada CORBA Kit (as I remeber),
but it required ORBit or something in this way (I don't rememer).

Good luck,
Mike
-----------------------------------------
                             ____|
                             \%/ |~~\
  O                                  |
 o>>        Mike Nowak               |
 T                                   |
/ >       vinnie@inetia.pl           |
http://www.geocities.com/vinnie14pl _|__

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Matthew Woodcraft]

Maciej Sobczak <maciej@maciejsobczak.com> writes:

> 3. What is the level of portability of the source code? C++ suffers
> from the fact that many vendors dare to dump crap on the market with
> the C++ logo on the boxes. The result is that we have many different
> 'dialects' of this (standardised) language. What about Ada? If I write
> something for GNAT, can I assume that some imaginary Windows compiler
> will eat it?

Nothing imaginary about Windows Ada compilers. If you write something
with Gnat on Un*x, it will run on Gnat for Windows unless you got into
OS-specific stuff.

Unlike C++ compilers, an Ada compiler which claims to implement the
standardised language will do so without bits missing. You can check
in the Gnat reference manual to make sure you're not using
Gnat-specific extensions.

-M-

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Marin David Condic]

Welllllll....... Let's be careful not to overstate the case. In porting
between a Sun Unix platform and a Windows platform, I have experienced some
byte sex problems, so if not designed properly, there *can* be some
difficulty with porting. With different compilers, there might be problems
with sizes for standard data types between platforms, although I don't
recall ever experiencing those directly for workstation ports. Clearly, if
one connects to platform-specific features, there will be problems with
porting. Or if one relies on compiler-specific packages, there will
potentially be porting problems. It isn't purely automatic.

Having said that, I can still testify that for command line oriented
programs, I have accomplished ports between Unix/Windows/VMS using the Gnat
compiler and it pretty much degenerated to a recompile of the sources. But
you *do* have to take some care in the original design to make sure you are
accounting for machine dependencies.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Matthew Woodcraft" <mattheww@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:87k7xj9t97.fsf@chiark.greenend.org.uk...
>
> Nothing imaginary about Windows Ada compilers. If you write something
> with Gnat on Un*x, it will run on Gnat for Windows unless you got into
> OS-specific stuff.
>

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[DuckE]

"Maciej Sobczak" <maciej@maciejsobczak.com> wrote in message
news:3BD87B95.2000703@maciejsobczak.com...
[snip]
> 1. Is there a *usual* interface in Ada for socket-related operations?
No.
There is a package called "AdaSockets" available that provides a binding to
sockets.
There is a class library called "Claw" that includes support for sockets.
I've heard that the next version of GNAT includes a sockets package.
It is very easy to interface to the standard C library for socket-related
operations, which is exactly what I did before the options I just listed
became available.

> 2. Is there some more or less standard GUI lib? I've spot a Tcl/Tk
> binding somewhere:
>      a. How does it work?
>      b. Is it efficient?
>      c. Does it require Tcl runtime installed to run programs?
>      d. What about Qt, for example?

Since you mentioned using Linux, you'd probably be the most interested in
GTKAda, which uses the GTK toolkit.  I'm sure you can find links on
www.adapower.com

> 3. What is the level of portability of the source code? C++ suffers from
> the fact that many vendors dare to dump crap on the market with the C++
> logo on the boxes. The result is that we have many different 'dialects'
> of this (standardised) language. What about Ada? If I write something
> for GNAT, can I assume that some imaginary Windows compiler will eat it?

I have only used two Ada compilers, so I don't consider myself to be an
expert, but it has been my experience that code is very portable.
The few exceptions I have encountered have been where one of the compilers
had a minor bug that did not detect a type error in my source code.  When I
rebuilt on the other compiler it complained about the error.  After
correcting the code it worked on both systems.

It took me a couple of hours to port a 250K SLOC program from Win32 to
Linux.  The program is a multi-tasking "console mode" program that makes use
of sockets.  I had to re-write the module that interfaces with sockets from
using winsock to a standard sockets package, and that was it.

> 4. What is the possibility of interfacing Ada with C (mainly - using C
> libs from Ada)? Is this made during the linking or in the spirit of
> Native Interfaces (like in Java)? For extremists - is it possible to
> call back some Ada procedure from the C function (possibly running in
> another thread)?

Interfacing to other languages was taken into account with the design of Ada
95.
If you look at the history of this newsgroup you'll find cases of people
interfacing with C, FORTRAN and COBOL.  I personally created a DLL in Ada
that was used by a Delphi program.

> 5. Is there a CORBA binding implemented for Ada?

Yes.  As I recall there is a free CORBA binding targeting Linux, and a
commercial binding available from IONA.

>
> Thanks for your time,
>
> --
> Maciej Sobczak
> http://www.maciejsobczak.com
>
You're welcome
SteveD

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[David Starner]

On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 22:52:37 +0200, Maciej Sobczak <maciej@maciejsobczak.com> wrote:
> 1. Is there a *usual* interface in Ada for socket-related operations?

No. GNAT.Sockets (I don't remember the earlier name for this) is a
common one, though.

> 2. Is there some more or less standard GUI lib? I've spot a Tcl/Tk 
> binding somewhere:

The "more or less standard" GUI is GtkAda, which depends on libgtk+.

>      d. What about Qt, for example?

There have been brief discussions about wrapping it, but GtkAda is good
enough and well maintained, so no one apparently wants to take the time
to make and support a binding.

> logo on the boxes. The result is that we have many different 'dialects' 
> of this (standardised) language. What about Ada? If I write something 
> for GNAT, can I assume that some imaginary Windows compiler will eat it?

The core language is almost perfectly standard, sans the occasional
compiler bug. (i.e. no for loop scope questions, no non-implemented
keywords). Most pragmas and GNAT specific units aren't portable, and the
annexes are standard _where implemented_. (GNAT is the only compiler
that has implemented all the annexes, but most are somewhat esoteric -
distributed computing, for example.)

> 4. What is the possibility of interfacing Ada with C (mainly - using C 
> libs from Ada)? 

No problem. The C-Ada interface is part of the standard, as is a
Fortran-Ada interface.

> Is this made during the linking or in the spirit of 
> Native Interfaces (like in Java)? 

I'm not sure what you're asking here? To interface with a C program, you
provide an appropiate procedure/function declaration, and follow it
with pragma Import (C, function_name) or pragma Import (C,
Function_Name, "functname"). It then gets linked in like any other
function.

> For extremists - is it possible to 
> call back some Ada procedure from the C function (possibly running in 
> another thread)?

Yes. As always, there's catches - you can't reliably throw exceptions
across the C function (except for a few systems), and I don't know what
will work with threading.

> 5. Is there a CORBA binding implemented for Ada?

Yes. Search for ORBit-Ada.

-- 
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
"I saw a daemon stare into my face, and an angel touch my breast; each 
one softly calls my name . . . the daemon scares me less."
- "Disciple", Stuart Davis

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Preben Randhol]

On 26 Oct 2001 02:32:09 GMT, David Starner wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 22:52:37 +0200, Maciej Sobczak <maciej@maciejsobczak.com> wrote:
>> 1. Is there a *usual* interface in Ada for socket-related operations?
> 
> No. GNAT.Sockets (I don't remember the earlier name for this) is a
> common one, though.

But this is not yet available in the public version of Gnat is it?

>> 2. Is there some more or less standard GUI lib? I've spot a Tcl/Tk 
>> binding somewhere:
>
> The "more or less standard" GUI is GtkAda, which depends on libgtk+.

Yes. Gtakada homepage can be found here: 

   http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/

   other things like XML library and GNU Visual Debugger
   can be found from here:

   http://libre.act-europe.fr/
 
>> 5. Is there a CORBA binding implemented for Ada?
> 
> Yes. Search for ORBit-Ada.

http://www.adapower.com/corba/


Note that there are also two online books on ada as well as reference
and rational manual, see below:

Some links:

 Short Intro I           :  http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ada.html
 Short Intro II          :  http://www.adaic.com/docs/flyers/95intro.html
 Short Overview          :  http://www.adaic.com/docs/flyers/95overvw.html

 Main Ada site           :  http://www.adapower.com/index2.html

 ISO Reference Manual    :  http://www.adapower.com/rm95/
 ISO Rational Manual     :  http://www.adapower.com/rationale/
 Quality and Style Guide :  http://www.adaic.com/docs/95style/html/cover.html

 Online Ada 95 book      :  http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je/adacraft/
 Online Ada 95 book II   :  http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/language/ada/ada95.pdf
 Ada 95 book reviews     :  http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/ada95books.html

 GNU Ada Compiler(GNAT)  :  http://www.gnat.com/
 GNAT for Linux, Dos,
 NetBSD, OS/2m SCO       :  http://www.gnuada.org/
 GNAT for Windows        :  http://home.trouwweb.nl/Jerry/

 GTKAda ToolKit (GTK+)   :  http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/
 GNADE Project           :  http://gnade.sourceforge.net/
 
Preben Randhol

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[David Starner]

On Fri, 26 Oct 2001 09:23:05 +0000 (UTC), Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote:
> On 26 Oct 2001 02:32:09 GMT, David Starner wrote:
>> On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 22:52:37 +0200, Maciej Sobczak <maciej@maciejsobczak.com> wrote:
>>> 1. Is there a *usual* interface in Ada for socket-related operations?
>> 
>> No. GNAT.Sockets (I don't remember the earlier name for this) is a
>> common one, though.
> 
> But this is not yet available in the public version of Gnat is it?

It's available in the GCC CVS version.

-- 
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
"I saw a daemon stare into my face, and an angel touch my breast; each 
one softly calls my name . . . the daemon scares me less."
- "Disciple", Stuart Davis

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Preben Randhol]

On 26 Oct 2001 17:22:22 GMT, David Starner wrote:
> It's available in the GCC CVS version.

Yes perhaps, but I think it is better to wait for 3.14p and the .deb and
.rpm packages than to start trying to compile the compiler oneself.
Escpecillay for a Newbie and as the CVS version is still considered
experimental.

Preben

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Ted Dennison]

In article <3BD87B95.2000703@maciejsobczak.com>, Maciej Sobczak says...
>2. Is there some more or less standard GUI lib? I've spot a Tcl/Tk 
>binding somewhere:

Probably the best Ada GUI lib for a Linux user would be GtkAda
(http://libre.act-europe.fr/GtkAda/).

>3. What is the level of portability of the source code? C++ suffers from 
>the fact that many vendors dare to dump crap on the market with the C++ 
>logo on the boxes. The result is that we have many different 'dialects' 
>of this (standardised) language. What about Ada? If I write something 
>for GNAT, can I assume that some imaginary Windows compiler will eat it?

The Ada culture is very different from the C++ culture there. Ada compilers that
don't properly implement the standard are just *not* accepted by the user
community, and thus there aren't many of them. Any compiler vendor can tell you
that it is quite common to get angry messages (and demands for bug fixes) from
users when they percieve that some section of the Ada Language Reference Manual
has been violated. In my experience any actual non-compliance found *is* treated
as a bug by the vendors.

However, there are some areas (clearly defined in the standard) where vendors
have some lattitude. Many of the "Annexes" in the standard are optional. In
fact, I believe there's still one that is only supported by Gnat. Also, vendors
are free to add their own pragmas. If a compiler encounters a pragma it doesn't
understand, it will ignore it, so this isn't disasterous, but it can make your
code non-portable if you aren't careful. In general, the places where things are
implmentation-defined are clearly called out in the spec, and it isn't difficult
to write code that is completely portable between compilers and platforms. My
company has a multi-threaded real-time scheduler that compiles and runs without
change on Win32 and vxWorks.

>4. What is the possibility of interfacing Ada with C (mainly - using C 
>libs from Ada)? Is this made during the linking or in the spirit of 

Quite easily done. There is a secion in the LRM all about it. See section B.3
and all subsections ( http://www.ada-auth.org/~acats/arm-html/RM-B-3.html ). The
pragmas used are shown in B proper.

>Native Interfaces (like in Java)? For extremists - is it possible to 
>call back some Ada procedure from the C function (possibly running in 
>another thread)?

Yup. I had to do both once when we had an existing C routine to call that
allocated memory, but we needed it to use Ada's allocators so that the memory
would be visible to other Ada tasks (this was on a Harris NightHawk, where tasks
were implemented as processes and all "globals" and dynamic allocation came from
shared memory). We just implmented our own C-interfaced allocation routine in
Ada and exported it as "malloc". Worked like a charm. 

>5. Is there a CORBA binding implemented for Ada?
Unfortunately I'm stuck in a Windows ghetto, so I don't know about that. But I
do know that there is a really good COM binding. From what I remember of CORBA,
an Ada binding wouldn't be difficult to do yourself in a pinch, but someone
probably has one already.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

No trees were killed in the sending of this message. 
However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Maciej Sobczak]

Hi,

Thank you very much for your answers.

I'm convinced now that Ada is quite mature technology with lots of stuff 
behind it, although there is no (S)uper (U)niversal (N)etwork of 
resellers nor any (M)ajor (S)oftware company like (I)nnocent (B)ig 
(M)anufacturer, that would shove big bucks into its development. They'd 
rather play fool with their own, non-standard toys.

Many of my colleagues haven't heard about Ada and it's a vain effort to 
find something about it in our bookshops. Not mentioning the employers.
But I'll keep learning and playing with it, there has to be some reason 
why big and critical systems are built in Ada, right?

Regards,

-- 
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.maciejsobczak.com

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Marin David Condic]

The big companies get behind their proprietary things because it helps them
lock up market share. Good for the stockholders. Bad for consumers. Ada is
difficult to lock up because it is an ISO standard and a number of vendors
are out there with products - unlike a number of other languages which are
either the property of one vendor or have customizations in them that make
them non-portable.

As for lack of books/etc. on the shelves of major stores? That is a
quandary. However there are a few things to do. One is to call a few of your
local bookstores and ask them if they have any. Enough calls starts
indicating demand and they'll start looking to stock some material. Another
thing is to ask them to special-order books you can find out about here and
elsewhere. If you're buying them that definitely indicates demand. A third
thing is to visit:

http://www.adapower.com/

You will find a wealth of materials pointed to from there. You will discover
that there are some fine resources for learning Ada on-line - totally
circumventing the Pulp-and-Ink Publishers (Do I get to trademark that one?
:-). You will also find sources for compilers, (some free - some at least
cheap) source code libraries, tools, etc.

If you're interested in learning about Ada, you'll find lots of folks
willing to help you out and a number of resources that make it easy to get
started.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Maciej Sobczak" <maciej@maciejsobczak.com> wrote in message
news:3BD9A519.5040502@maciejsobczak.com...
> Hi,
>
> Thank you very much for your answers.
>
> I'm convinced now that Ada is quite mature technology with lots of stuff
> behind it, although there is no (S)uper (U)niversal (N)etwork of
> resellers nor any (M)ajor (S)oftware company like (I)nnocent (B)ig
> (M)anufacturer, that would shove big bucks into its development. They'd
> rather play fool with their own, non-standard toys.
>
> Many of my colleagues haven't heard about Ada and it's a vain effort to
> find something about it in our bookshops. Not mentioning the employers.
> But I'll keep learning and playing with it, there has to be some reason
> why big and critical systems are built in Ada, right?
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Maciej Sobczak
> http://www.maciejsobczak.com
>

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Ted Dennison]

In article <3BD9A519.5040502@maciejsobczak.com>, Maciej Sobczak says...
>I'm convinced now that Ada is quite mature technology with lots of stuff 
>behind it, although there is no (S)uper (U)niversal (N)etwork of 
>resellers nor any (M)ajor (S)oftware company like (I)nnocent (B)ig 
>(M)anufacturer, that would shove big bucks into its development. They'd 
>rather play fool with their own, non-standard toys.

I think that's a very large part of it. Its not as easy to make custom
incompatable versions of an Ada compiler to lock users into your compiler/OS.
The two companies most famous for selling compilers, Borland and Microsoft,
pretty much built their businesses around that kind of behavior.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

No trees were killed in the sending of this message. 
However a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <3BD9A519.5040502@maciejsobczak.com>, Maciej Sobczak <maciej@maciejsobczak.com> writes:
> Hi,
> 
> Thank you very much for your answers.
> 
> I'm convinced now that Ada is quite mature technology with lots of stuff 
> behind it, although there is no (S)uper (U)niversal (N)etwork of 
> resellers nor any (M)ajor (S)oftware company like (I)nnocent (B)ig 
> (M)anufacturer, that would shove big bucks into its development. They'd 
> rather play fool with their own, non-standard toys.

Sun has backed Java.

Before that, Microsoft backed Visual Basic.

Before that, IBM backed PL/I.

In each case, if the language prevailed it would boost the fortunes
of its major backer.

Ada is too standardized to provide a major competitive advantage to
a compiler vendor who also happens to sell operating systems.

Re: Newbie wanna Ada

[Michal Nowak]

>Many of my colleagues haven't heard about Ada and it's a vain effort to 
>find something about it in our bookshops.

As I remeber, there was book titled "Ada95" published by Helion two 
or three years ago. Maybe thay have it stored somewhere, I don't think
it was selling well. Even if you ask computer scientist here what is Ada,
they will faster match it with song title "Ada, to nie wypada", than with
programming language :-( I saw this book, but I don't have it. Nearly all
subjects from this book you will find in free online resources, for 
example:
ADA 95: THE CRAFT OF OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING
by John English, available at:
http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je/adacraft/

and
Object Oriented Software in Ada 95 Second Edition
by Michael Smith, available at:
http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/language/ada/

If you want printed book, I think that "Ada as a Second Language"
by Norman Cohen is a good positon. Short review is available at:
http://www.adahome.com/Resources/Books/ada95reviews.html/


>Not mentioning the employers.

Aaaaarrgh. I haven't find any Ada related job here yet. Everywhere "Visual
Basic, C++, Java required..."

>But I'll keep learning and playing with it, there has to be some reason 
>why big and critical systems are built in Ada, right?

Yea. When I started to write in Ada, I realized that error rate noticeably
decreased in compare to C++. It is quite easy to make a mistake between 
== and = or && and & in C. At my work lots of time I spent findind bugs
in C-like (C++/PHP/Java) code in software written by my predecessors. 
After that I'm sick when I see C-like code. 
It is also harder to write messy code, especailly if get familiar with 
"Ada Rationale" (http://www.adaic.org/standards/ada95.html/)

Happy Ada programming,
Mike
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