best learning habits

best learning habits

[00120260a]

Hi
If we were to study in standalone,
according to you what would be the best strategy ?
I am  not studying programmation at all, I am a biologist.
Do you think there is enough materials and corrected exercices online not to enter into a classical scolar cursus ?

Thanks

Re: best learning habits

[framefritti]

Given the group you posted in, I guess you want to learn Ada.  You say also that you do not have programming experience and this makes me curious about why you decided to start your trip in the programming world with Ada. Mind you, Ada is (IMHO) a wonderful language, but maybe its workflow (as the workflow of many compiled languages) is not the most intuitive thing for someone who never programmed.  I do not want to discourage you, actually, I am saying that you should not be discouraged by some initial difficulties, that would be perfectly physiological.

Coming to your question, there are not many online resources to learn Ada.  Recently AdaCore started a set of "lessons" about Ada at 

   http://university.adacore.com/

There is also a wikibook 

   http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming

that is not bad, although it is not exactly aimed to be "didactic."

My personal suggestion for self-teaching is to start by learning some programming in general.  The idea of programming is more or less the same, independently on the language (at least languages of "imperative" type, like Ada).  Also, most of the tutorials about any language suppose that the reader has some programming experience, so that there is no need to explain what is a loop, a variable, a file and so on.

Suggestions about how to learn programming?  Sorry, I do not know... I learnt in the '80 (yes, I am that old! :-) with the help of some amateur electronic magazine and I do not know which resources are available online nowadays.  If we were in the '80 I would suggest learning with BASIC that is an interpretative language, pretty easy, that would introduce you to the basic concepts like variables, loops, subroutines, I/O, and so on...  Once you have those concepts, moving to Ada is pretty simple (well, more or less... depend on the level you are aiming to...) and (for the basic stuff) just a matter of learning a new syntax.  (Yes, I know I am way over-simplifying here...)
I know that nowadays there are few "visual" languages that should make programming easier.  I would not suggest those, however, since I am afraid that the graphical approach would hide from you exactly those concepts that you want to learn.

Another suggestion (that works for me) for self-teaching is... to write programs.  Usually when I want to learn a new language I get some documentation, I read it and then I "play" with the new tool by writing some code.  It can be just very simple stuff (I remember my very first program [in BASIC, beginning of '80]: it printed on the screen the multiplication table of "2": 2x1 = 2, 2x2=4, ...), but it will help you in understanding the language you are trying to master.

Good luck and have fun!

Riccardo

Re: best learning habits

[solomon.hierrussalimsky]

I want to learn ADA too... I am a railway ingeneer...