Learning Ada (Was: unsigned type)

[Jacob Sparre Andersen <sparre@nbi.dk>]

Rob Solomon wrote:

> Ada as a Second Language is a far better book to learn from.  My
> earlier posts were because I first opened the John Barnes book and
> that left me w/ more questions than answers.  It introduces very
> advanced concepts like OOP, pointers, abstract types, etc before
> loops are covered.  That is, he writes about advanced data
> structures before covering more basic control structures.  This made
> it very hard for me to follow.

I would say that the way Barnes' book is structured points out a very
important aspect of Ada; Types are important!

When you write a program in Ada, you should start out by considering
which data you want to handle, and then declare the appropriate data
types for handling these data.  Once you have declared the types, you
can start writing algorithms which handle the data.

It might be to push things a bit too far, but I think it would be
beneficial, if the types Float and Integer were removed from the
language.

> So I am going onto the Norman Cohen book.  This is much better
> organized for a newcomer.

Personally I learned Ada (95) from the Language Reference Manual.

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
"It is a syntax error to write FORTRAN while not wearing a blue tie."