From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Path: eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Paul Rubin Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Learning Ada Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2020 14:29:56 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: <87imcd8l63.fsf@nightsong.com> References: <1dab8412-0ff6-4081-b973-783167a37e6cn@googlegroups.com> <620a8fb2-758c-4bca-b4d3-f2e49fce3703n@googlegroups.com> <871rj2cy61.fsf@nightsong.com> <211a3c48-447a-4d23-840d-d868da44f740n@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="06eaec95c6dc5315903b62fcce318bb0"; logging-data="2614"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX183uoZLOBrYqy4yivfevE88" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/26.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:Stabmsqmby81Aj4g7mStOl4UdQk= sha1:Jtl3XXC7oLtoGGmdJiIzY5vFkls= Xref: reader02.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:60173 List-Id: Jack Davy 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.