Giving Ada a Chance

Post by Avshalom » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #77

drfuchs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ranged types are directly from Pascal. You can also use them to specify the valid indexes for an array (so a given array might be zero-based, or one-based, or 1900-based, or even -32768-based). A very positive feature, I agree.

And, even better, arrays in Ada (can't speak to Pascal) can be any discrete type so long as it is a range: type Character_Histogram is Array (range 'A'..'Z') of Integer; -- syntax may be off, not enough practice to do this cold right now

Post by FpUser » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #77

drfuchs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ranged types are directly from Pascal. You can also use them to specify the valid indexes for an array (so a given array might be zero-based, or one-based, or 1900-based, or even -32768-based). A very positive feature, I agree.

And, even better, arrays in Ada (can't speak to Pascal) can be any discrete type so long as it is a range: type Character_Histogram is Array (range 'A'..'Z') of Integer; -- syntax may be off, not enough practice to do this cold right now

  type
    TPerson = record
      name: string;
      age: integer;
    end;
    TThrteenPersons = array[10..22] of TPerson;

  procedure Check(const aPerson: TPerson);
  var
    vPerson: TThrteenPersons;
  begin
    vPerson[11] := aPerson; // this is ok
    vPerson[1] := aPerson; // this one gives compile error
  end;

Post by JNRowe » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

the_only_law wrote: post #11

I love Ada, unfortunately it’s real world use seems to be relegated to old legacy code. I’d like to use it a little more on the side, but I also need to keep my priorities focused on realism, which sadly means ignoring Ada and learning something like C++ which seems unapproachable from any angle. Ada also seems to have a weirdly negative rep in many circles it seems. I recall looking around for an Ada compiler for a…

Post by mmcdermott » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #67

iamevn wrote: post #39

> I can’t help but think that complicated programming paradigms would seem more intuitive to beginners if taught through Ada instead of C and its derivative languages, as is common in computer science and engineering faculties worldwide. At my university, the first courses you took in CS used Ada. I think it was a really good choice but I was in the minority I guess because after my year they switched to either using…

I am not sure if this is still the case today, but Computer Engineering in EE Department used to teach Pascal / Ada / C as the first programming language. With the expectation that making a program to compile correctly is hard. Before you move off to something like Perl / Java / Python. While in CS they tends to start to Python or Java. And you start learning all the OO, Procedure or whatever paradigm before going in…

Post by okl » Tue, Mar 02, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #78

jandrese wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I went to school the instructor talked a bit about Ada, but as far as I know there weren't any compilers available that mere students could afford. This was in the mid-90s. I remember doing a bit of comparison of the syntax between languages, and Ada's lack of anything like a switch/case statement stood out, but the instructor did talk up the idea that if you could get it to compile it would run in Ada, assuming…

I don't know when it was added, but Ada does have a switch/case equivalent construct and I can't imagine it wasn't available early on. case X is when 1 => ...; when 2 => ...; when 3 | 4 | 100 => ... when others => ... end case;