drs@cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu (Darrell Schiebel) (07/22/89)
Krishan M Nainanin writes: > I am interested in learning Ada. Can anyone recommend a good book > which is not VERY basic since I do know C and Pascal and have a > good knowledge of multi-processing. I asked the same question a few weeks ago and the wonderful people on the network provided be with many suggestions. I would like to thank those who responded. Charles Fineman Peter van der Linden Mark Davidson Ron Casselman Thomas Hoyt Verna Friesen Mark Oestmann Donna McClanahan Scott Moody The following is a Summary of Responses: Haberman & Perry (Ada for experienced programmers) (is a WASTE of money.) (Its treatment of advanced features was patchy at best, obtuse at worst.) (very easy to read and understand, but misses a lot of stuff.) (difficult to search for things) Programming in Ada by J.G.P. Barnes pretty good. (Most importantly, it covers all the aspects of the language.) Ada Concurrent Programming by Narain Gehani (good if your doing concurrent programming but its not good as a general reference to the language.) Haberman and Wassi have an excellent book comparing Ada to Pascal. "Software Engineering with Ada" Second Edition Author: Grady Booch Publisher: Benjamin/Cummings (excellent book on/about Ada including the history of the language.) (most helpful) Ada As A Second Language by Cohen (most complete coverage of the language) (useful to have around when the language reference manual is too terse.) (EXCELLENT book) (an EXCELLENT book) (Cohen's text was the best reference (much clearer than the LRM)) "System Design with Ada" by R.J.A. Buhr (discusses the design of concurrent systems in Ada) (Ada as a software engineering language using an easy to understand graphical notation) "Introductory Ada - Packages for Programming" by Putnam P. Texel. (incomplete coverage of Ada, but it does an excellent job of getting a novice in a proper Ada mind-set.) (Lots of great examples in this text.) "Rational for the Design of the Ada prog lang" (You start thinking about some language issue, and then look in the book and it goes into the history of that same language issue; how it has been done, and why Ada did it their way.) (fills in the void that the LRM and any other book leaves out.)