Suitability of Ada as a general-purpose language

Hi

I have a dilemma: whether to learn Ada or Delphi/Object Pascal (I have a only Pascal background, and I wish to stick with Pascal-like languages). My target would be to write day-to-day (business, educational, etc), relativelysimple desktop applications.

Since I don't need to write scientific or engineering programs, and I don'tneed to work in embedded systems, my fear is that using Ada may be a bit of an overkill in my case. But still, I am very much attracted to it, because Ada has a reputation for being rock solid, with good libraries, well documented, well supported, etc. I also like very much its readability.
On the other hand, Delphi/Object Pascal is probably easier (and less complicated) for my needs, and may have more development tools (though I am not sure of this).

Could you please share with me your insights regarding the pros and cons ofchoosing Ada in my case?

I thank you all in advance.

Dufr

Hi Dufr

I like all sorts of things about Ada but one of the best features for me is the "police state" compiler. I don't have so decades of experience with C++ bug bites and Ada will help save me from some of my own errors, strong typing is great.

There are not a lot of libraries but check out GCC -fdump-ada-spec and it's sidekick -fdump-ada-spec-slim. They will help bind to C code. Ada can interface with other languages too.

I write a skeleton of what I want in C and then bind to that instead of creating full bindings.

Please don't be discouraged with all the dead links around the net, an Ada compiler ought to be available 20 years from now. Long term, recent projects like the Boeing 787 use Ada.

There are lots of cheap used Ada books at abebooks and lots of pdf Ada books on the net

If you have any question I would love to help, although I only have 7 months with Ada myself

On 30.07.12 13:43, Dufr wrote:
> On the other hand, Delphi/Object Pascal is probably easier (and less complicated) for my needs, and may have more development tools (though I am not sure of this).

I understand that there are companies owning some Delphi
skeletons in the closet, and they are looking for people
who would do the (sometimes) frustrating work of maintaining
this kind of software, or rewriting it in some language that
current management finds more appropriate. Or so that its
"architecture", if any, is discovered.

Since Delphi was cheap and more popular on Windows PCs,
I'd assume the number of Delphi jobs is higher. The implication
"He can write GUI software using language X!" and
"Therefore, he can write GUI software using language Y" is seen
as false. Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong!

Being "market-oriented", and not a brilliant engineer,
never pick Ada.

> Could you please share with me your insights regarding the pros and cons of choosing Ada in my case?
>
Pros : Modular/Strong typing/ Easy to make concurrent programming on multicore/True Portability on win-MacOS-Linux/Easy maintability because the langage is readable/Execution performance in line with the C langage.

Cons : interface with databases is somewhat messy and requires personal investment.
For a day-to-day business, I recommand GTK interface as User Interface.

> Being "market-oriented", and not a brilliant engineer,
>
> never pick Ada.

I am self employed so I can choose whatever language I like and I think it makes good business sense. If you have to submit to stupid employers better learn javascript and PHP

Dufr <dufriz@gmail.com> пи�ал(а) в �воём пи�ьме Mon, 30Jul 2012 15:43:46
+0400:

> On the other hand, Delphi/Object Pascal is probably easier (and less
> complicated) for my needs, and may have more development tools (thoughI
> am not sure of this).

You always can use not all these complicated things at once.
There is no such requirement to get all-in-one-and-immediately, I suppose.

I dont know special pros, but consider that everything in this field will
become a pros with some time spent on it. eclipse ide (aka gnatbench)
should be a plus also. since you referred that source code reading is
important, I can consider that Ada has this as pros too.

cons is that you will stuck with c.l.a. also there is no nice and complete
gui setup program to install compiler, dev-tools and additional libs.

--
�апи�ано в почтовом клиентебраузера Opera: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 06:27:23 -0700 (PDT), Patrick wrote:

>> Being "market-oriented", and not a brilliant engineer,
>>
>> never pick Ada.
>
> I am self employed so I can choose whatever language I like and I think it
> makes good business sense. If you have to submit to stupid employers
> better learn javascript and PHP

Some of our customers indeed demand Delphi, which is a legacy language for
them. As a consequence they demand monstrous Borland C++ as well.

This or that way one have to learn many languages.

But of course, if you are free to choose there is no reason not to take
Ada.

--
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

like any language you can also jut use a subset. It don't know anything about Ada Java like interfaces yet.

> like any language you can also jut use a subset. It don't know anything about Ada Java like interfaces yet.

Forgot to mention that there are compiler directives(pragmas) to help you stick to a predefined subset.

If you stuck to one of these you'd have Pascal but with a stronger type system.

Vasiliy Molostov <molostoff@gmail.com> пи�ал(а) в �воём пи�ьме Mon, 30 Jul
2012 17:45:45 +0400:


> cons is that you will stuck with c.l.a.


but in case of delphy I am afarid even imagine with which thing you will
stuck instead,
so stuck to c.l.a. can be considered a pros too.


--
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On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 06:50:49 -0700 (PDT), Patrick wrote:

> like any language you can also jut use a subset. It don't know anything
> about Ada Java like interfaces yet.

One of great weaknesses of Delphi is that it is not fully OO. It were quite
possible to extend Ada in a way that all types had classes and inheritable
interfaces too with no time/memory overhead.

OO is natural progression of ADT. There is no alternative to OO for a
strongly typed language. Which does not imply that Java interfaces are any
good.

--
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

See
http://hammerprinciple.com/therightt...ems/ada/pascal

--
Ludovic Brenta.

Le Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:19:39 +0200, Ludovic Brenta
<ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> a écrit:

> See
> http://hammerprinciple.com/therightt...ems/ada/pascal
>
> --
> Ludovic Brenta.

The funniest is at the very bottom (the one which most applies to Pascal,
with 5/5 for Pascal over Ada):

“I often write things in this language with the
intent of rewriting them in something else later�.

A bit too much severe with Pascal by the way; many are worst.

--
“Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.� [1]
“Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.� [1]
[1]: Epigrams on Programming — Alan J. — P. Yale University

Ada is in the same league in terms of executable size and speed to C.

the wikipedia book has a section on why hello world is so big, there are some things required to bring the size down and the computer language shootout has Ada clocked

Dufr wrote on comp.lang.ada:
> Could you please share with me your insights regarding the pros
> and cons of choosing Ada in my case?

Pros of Ada relative to Pascal:
- Ada is "Pascal done right". No dangling else problem. Support
for modules built into the language. Strong typing taken to the
extreme (type Number_Of_Apples can be declared to be incompatible
with type Number_Of_Oranges).

- There is only one language standard and several compilers
implementing it. No dialects. (TBH, not all compilers implement
Ada 2012 yet, some are Ada 2005- or Ada 95-only). But all versions
of the language are 99.9% backward compatible.

- The language standard ("Ada Reference Manual") is one of very, very
few ISO standards that are available to the public at no cost.

- Some compilers cost zero, at least one other compiler is very
cheap. Most others are quite expensive but they are only intended
for embedded targets. One compiler is Free Software: you can see
and change the sources. No vendor lock-in.

- comp.lang.ada.

- the culture of Ada programmers. They chose Ada for its safety,
against the prevailing lemming mentality. They usually know
several other languages. They usually write good software. You
can say that Ada selects the best programmers.

- the bragging factor. When programming in Ada you can boast that you
use the same language as TGV, nuclear power plants, satellites,
rockets, airline carriers and air traffic control systems. Serious
language for serious programmers.

Cons of Ada relative to Pascal:
- object-oriented features are implemented in a way quite unique
among programming languages. You may have to re-learn OOP if you
know it from another language and you may find the Ada way counter-
intuitive. But it works well in practice.

--
Ludovic Brenta.