Re: Ada ad in Embedded Systems Programming stinks

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

But Erik, surely you can't think the RM is the right place to learn Ada
style. Indeed much of the RM, of necessity, discusses marginal cases and
rules that are there for semantic consistency, but are hardly valuable
tools in the Ada programmer's arsenal. 

In the past, I have been a big supporter of the idea of all Ada programmers
using the Ada RM as a major reference tool, but the Ada 9X RM, partly as a
result of the increased complexity of the language, particularly in its
type model, and partly because of the greater emphasis on a somewhat more
formal style (in an attempt to be more precise), is considerably more
difficult to understand than the Ada 83 RM.

Erik, I would be interested if your opinions are arrived at with a thorough
familiarity with the 9X RM, or are more just the way you hope things should
be.

Anyway, I continue to think that having optional RM references is what
serves the community of people using GNAT best. 95% of the time, the
RM reference would be completely unnecessary, even for a novice
programmer, and only in a faction of the remaining 5% of cases would
it really be a big help, and that's the case in which you can look it
up.

Note also that the GNOME approach gives much MORE than simply an RM
reference, it gives a more thorough explanation, of which the RM
reference is only one aspect.

THe issue of how accessible defining documents should be is an interesting
one. I am one of the relatively few people who got to know the Algol-68 
revised report thoroughly. At that level of knowledge, it is a superb
document, extremely precise, very complete, and very accessible.

However, the great majority of people found it completely inpenetrable,
and it clearly contributed to the demise of the language.

I am afraid that if people's first introduction to using Ada at a simple
level points to the RM, this will NOT be helpful in convincing people
that Ada is simple to learn and easy to use.

Of course experienced programmers will continue to use the RM as a primary
reference source, and that's why it is valuable to get the error references
when you need them.