Re: Learning Ada

[Jack Davy <algojack@tutanota.com>]

On Tuesday, October 6, 2020 at 5:06:20 AM UTC+1, andrew...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 16, 2020 at 3:13:23 AM UTC-4, Jack Davy wrote: 
> > On Wednesday, September 16, 2020 at 2:23:21 AM UTC+1, Paul Rubin wrote: 
> > > Jack Davy <algo...@tutanota.com> writes: 
> > > > seem to be many books on Ada, but there is a very recent one for 
> > > > beginners which I will probably get to fill in the gaps not covered by 
> > > > "The Craft". https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484254271 
> > > I haven't examined that book directly but based on the preview and 
> > > blurb, it does seem to be beginner oriented, thus likely to have gaps of 
> > > its own. If you're trying to fill gaps, you probably want something 
> > > more complete and advanced. 
> > > 
> > > I semi-recently got another book that looks very good, though it's still 
> > > sitting around without my having read much of it: Analysable Real-Time 
> > > Systems: Programmed in Ada, by Andy Wellings and Alan Burns. It is 
> > > basically an updated reprint of an older book by the same authors, 
> > > self-published in paperback, so it is a good value. 
> > @ Gautier, thanks for the links. When I get Windows 7 on VirtualBox I'll give the LEA editor a try, I'm not so keen on using Wine, it's a bit hit & miss. Also since I learned Vim a few years ago no other editors really do it for me, unless they have Vim bindings ;). 
> > 
> > @ 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'm assuming I won't need to unlearn anything if I learn the basics from an Ada 95 book. The real-time stuff would be over my head at this point I think, and not really something I had in mind when considering Ada, although I do have a background in electronics, and see that there is Ada compiler for AVR on adacore. 
> > 
> > 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, but that never put me off because I learned Turbo Pascal at Uni (25 years ago) and more recently Free Pascal/Lazarus. Never was much of a fan of the curly bracket languages.
> Beginning Ada Programming is meant to be a gentle and guided introduction to Ada. It does cover Ada 2012 topics and all of the code was compiled on an Ada 2012 compiler to make sure that it worked. 
> 
> My goal was never to compete with the other more advanced books on Ada, but to provide an easier way to get learn this wonderful language and become more comfortable with writing code in it.

I  intend to purchase your book but at the moment I'm working through this one :
https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/cs1book/
It has many example programs and is clearly written, although it only covers up to Ada 95. I'm not new to programming so I'm getting through it pretty quickly. I've download John English's JEWL library and have successfully compiled a few of the example programs using Wine on Linux. It seems very easy to use compared to most GUI libraries. A Linux port of it would be nice but I wouldn't know where to start with that.