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Ada95 Book, Now Free Online

Posted by timothy on from the while-supplies-last dept.

zmower writes: "John English has just put his out-of-print "Ada 95: The Craft of Object-Oriented Programming" online at http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je/adacraft/ I've read this and a few other Ada books. This was a good read and definitely the best introduction to Ada book."

13 comments

  1. fine book by sahasamrat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    this is one of the best books i have read on ada go for it

    --
    sam
    1. Re:fine book by andy@petdance.com · · Score: 1, Flamebait
      this is one of the best books i have read on ada

      Does that mean there were others?

    2. Re:fine book by heliocentric · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The only one I have dealt with is

      Ada 95: Problem Solving and Program Design (3rd Ed.) by Feldman and Koffman

      And those of you out there who are thinking of reading that linked book and are looking to get ada for your system:

      http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfcs/bios/mcc_html/adagide .html
      This site is the AdaGIDE homepage and contains information on AdaGIDE only (my links to GNAT don't seem valid any longer).

      --
      Wheeeee
    3. Re:fine book by T.E.D. · · Score: 1

      > Does that mean there were others?

      There certianly are lots of others to read. My boss has about 13 different Ada books in his cubicle area . But then he's a bit of a book nut. I think Amazon sends him christmas cards :-).

      Personally this one isn't my favorite Ada reference, but then I'm a bit more of an expert. For beginners, I understand its a very good book, and the price is certianly right. :-)

    4. Re:fine book by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.gnuada.org is a good place to find GNAT for many platforms.

      Start at www.adapower.com if you need anything more esoteric.

    5. Re:fine book by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Does that mean there were others?

      Many others. I learned Ada95 using Barnes' Programming in Ada 95 2nd Edition. Not a bad book, but I had already learned Pascal in high school, and both C and C++ at college. Barnes' book might not be the best for a first language learner. (BTW of the languages I know, I like Ada95 the best.)

  2. This is front page material. by L3WKW4RM · · Score: 5, Informative

    This ought to be on the front page. This is an excellent book, I wish it'd encourage more people to start writing some beautiful Ada code. It's a shame so many open source projects are done in C/C++ when Ada lends itself so well to large projects.

    You can get the free (and awesome) Gnat Ada compiler here:

    ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/gnat

    Read up and start writing some great code!

  3. Good for Ada by zmower · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's now a wealth of Ada documentation online but most of it is quite dry. This book will be a great boon for Ada in general; not only is it free, it's darn good too! Big Thanks to John.

    If anyones interested in Ada, I recommend GtkAda, Booch Components, XML/Ada and of course the GNAT Ada compiler from those nice people at ACT.

    Now, if I ever get round to writting that C++ header file to Ada binding tool we'll be all set to... take over the world. ;-)

    --

    Sig pending!
  4. yep by BigBong · · Score: 1

    My university taught Ada as the core language for some ungodly reason. This was our primary textbook and definitely a fine one.

    1. Re:yep by DGolden · · Score: 1

      Did your university have a lot of ties to the U.S. military? If so, then there you go - Ada is mandated for many contracts, so they were just prepping graduates for the army.

      --
      Choice of masters is not freedom.
  5. Already got the dead tree version... by Betabug · · Score: 1

    Hmmm, I already got the dead tree version, but the
    digital version is nice to keep around on the laptop.

    I found the book a good read, but still had to look
    up some things in other books.

  6. Nope (was:yep) by T.E.D. · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The Ada "mandate" has been dead for at least 5 years now, so that is definitely not it.

    The reason so many military contracts still use Ada is the same reason so many safety-critical projects (avionics, air traffic control, train control, nuclear plant control) use it: its the safest and least error-prone language yet devised.

    The reason a lot of universities use it falls from the same logic. If students aren't wasting all their time chasing down bugs in their simple programs, you can teach them (and have them implement) much more advanced concepts.