Re: Learning Ada

[Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>]

Jack Davy <algojack@tutanota.com> writes:
> @ 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 think Ada 95 OOP is not really used very much, and the changes in Ada
2012 are things like contracts, and built-in SPARK syntax.  You could
also look at the online book "Ada Distilled" which is about Ada 95.  I
found it an ok way to get started, though I never really progressed
beyond that.

> I do have a background in electronics, and see that there is Ada
> compiler for AVR on adacore.

I don't know the current state of that, but some years ago it was rather
hard to use or parts were missing or whatever.  These days, the AVR is
in decline since it is so limited.  Everyone uses ARM or maybe soon
RISC-V processors even for tiny embedded stuff.

> 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

Tooling, libraries, language verbosity, etc.  As pure language, though,
it is still mysterious to me what Rust offers that Ada doesn't.

Today, for most programming, "systems languages" including Ada, C, C++,
and Rust are all imho somewhat niche.  Unless you are dealing with
specialized problems (such as embedded or OS's), computers have almost
unbounded resources.  So it's easier to get your work done using
languages with automatic memory management, unbounded arithmetic, etc.

The main cost is consuming more machine resources and losing some timing
determinism, but most of the time you can live with both of those.  Ada
is best for more demanding applications which usually involve realtime
or high reliability constraints.