cw (04/27/83)
A recent article listed three items in an Ada reference list. They were the 1979 SIGPLAN Preliminary Reference Manual, Wegner's book, and the Ledgard book with the 1980 reference manual bound in. All three are badly out of date because they refer to old versions of the standard. I suggest the following: Reference Manual for the Ada Programming Language ANSI/MIL-STD-1815 A This should be available in a number of places soon. It was accepted in February 1983 and the copy I have is date January 1983. Government Printing Office will no doubt be one source; Ada Letters, the publication of AdaTEC, may devote a whole issue to reprinting the manual. This new manual is also considerably clearer (though still a reference manual in style) than earlier ones. Narain Gehani Ada: An Advanced Introduction Prentice-Hall, 1983. Gehani actually wrote his book using the 1982 reference manual. However, he had a good handle on what the changes would be and there is almost nothing in error because of manual changes. He will be publishing a new edition soon and the hardbound version (I think) will include the new ANSI reference manual. This is the currently best book for experienced programmers. J.G.P. Barnes Programming in Ada Addison-Wesley, 1982 I.C. Pyle The Ada Programming Language Prentice-Hall International, 1981 These two older books are good elementary introductions and are not likely to be seriously misleading about the ANSI standard language. Grady Booch Software Engineering With Ada Benjamin/Cummings Publishing, 1983. I have not read this book; it must be based on the July, 1982, manual; hence, it is probably slightly out-of-date. It has been described to me by another reader as "religious"; that is, it sells a certain style of programming very heavily. Still, probably a reasonable book. Charles