Re: Learning Ada

[Jack Davy <algojack@tutanota.com>]

On Wednesday, September 16, 2020 at 8:13:23 AM UTC+1, Jack Davy wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 16, 2020 at 2:23:21 AM UTC+1, Paul Rubin wrote: 
> > Jack Davy <algo...@tutanota.com> writes: 
> > > seem to be many books on Ada, but there is a very recent one for 
> > > beginners which I will probably get to fill in the gaps not covered by 
> > > "The Craft". https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484254271 
> > I haven't examined that book directly but based on the preview and 
> > blurb, it does seem to be beginner oriented, thus likely to have gaps of 
> > its own. If you're trying to fill gaps, you probably want something 
> > more complete and advanced. 
> > 
> > I semi-recently got another book that looks very good, though it's still 
> > sitting around without my having read much of it: Analysable Real-Time 
> > Systems: Programmed in Ada, by Andy Wellings and Alan Burns. It is 
> > basically an updated reprint of an older book by the same authors, 
> > self-published in paperback, so it is a good value.
> @ Gautier, thanks for the links. When I get Windows 7 on VirtualBox I'll give the LEA editor a try, I'm not so keen on using Wine, it's a bit hit & miss. Also since I learned Vim a few years ago no other editors really do it for me, unless they have Vim bindings ;). 
> 
> @ Paul, I was thinking that the beginner's Apress book would fill in the gaps regarding Ada 2012 specifically, which as I understand it has changed from previous versions mainly in regard to OOP; I'm assuming I won't need to unlearn anything if I learn the basics from an Ada 95 book. The real-time stuff would be over my head at this point I think, and not really something I had in mind when considering Ada, although I do have a background in electronics, and see that there is Ada compiler for AVR on adacore. 
> 
> The more I look at this language the more I wonder why it isn't more popular. Maybe people just don't like the pascalish syntax, but that never put me off because I learned Turbo Pascal at Uni (25 years ago) and more recently Free Pascal/Lazarus. Never was much of a fan of the curly bracket languages.

I found an impressive list of 'Things to like about Ada' posted by a C/C++ career programmer on the AVR freaks forum (in reply #13)  : https://www.avrfreaks.net/forum/i-didnt-know-you-could-get-ada-avr

My main reason for wanting to learn Ada is the last on his list :

"Promotes a professional, anti-hacker mentality.
By being unforgiving the language promotes the valuable discipline of specifying and writing code more exactly, without the temptations of slipping into bit-twiddling or other programming habits that subvert (and often break) the data or code models. When proper programming discipline is not enforced by the language then it must be voluntary, and in those cases discipline can and inevitably will slip, but when the language enforces much of that discipline then there are no easy ways to avoid it, and the resulting code is higher in quality and faster to develop."

Maybe that's why Ada isn't more popular - being disciplined isn't easy, and hacking is more fun. But I've learned the hard way that it's actually much more satisfying when your programs are bug-free and work properly the first time you run them. Any language which enforces more thinking and less trial-and-error coding is a winner in my book.