Ada Tutorials

1. Introducing Ada 95 : The Language For A Complex World
   Modern society is becoming very dependent upon software. Our transport systems, financial systems, medical systems and defense systems all depend to a very large degree upon software. As a consequence the safety of many human lives and much property now depends upon the reliable functioning of software. Moreover, the fall in the cost of hardware has now made possible the development of large software systems. Ada is a programming language of special value in the development of large programs which must work reliably. This applies to most defense applications (from which background Ada evolved) and extends to many application domains. Indeed over half the Ada programs now being developed are for non-defense applications.
                                                    
2. Ada95 Lovelace tutorial
   Welcome to the Ada95 Lovelace tutorial! This tutorial will explain the basics of the Ada computer programming language. This tutorial assumes that you have had some exposure to some other algorithmic programming language (such as Pascal, C, C++, or Fortran). This tutorial teaches the latest version of Ada, termed `Ada 95' or `Ada 9X', but it does note differences where they occur with the previous version of Ada (termed `Ada 83' or `Ada 87'). Lovelace was developed by David A. Wheeler. 
                                         
3. Learn Ada on the Web (LAW)
   In time the copyright of the "Ada: A Developmental Approach" material will be reassigned to Prentice Hall and will become the contents of the second edition of "Ada: A Developmental Approach", Fintan Culwin 1992. Publication is expected in early 1996. The text in the "Ada: A Developmental Approach" part of the server is provided for on-line browsing only. Printed copies of a small amount of this material, not amounting to more than one chapter, may be taken for personal use only.Organisations wanting to make more extensive use of the material prior to publication, or who would want to make a copy of the server for more efficient access should contact Fintan Culwin at the address below.
                                              
4. Ada-95: A guide for C and C++ programmers 
   This document is written primarily for C and C++ programmers and is set out to describe the Ada programming language in a way more accessible to them. I have used the standard Ada documentation conventions, code will look like this and keywords will look like this. I will include references to the Ada Reference Manual in braces and in italics, {1.1}, which denotes section 1.1. The ARM is reference 1 at the end of this document. Another useful reference is the Lovelace on-line tutorial which is a great way to pick up Ada basics. 
                                                                      
5. The Quick Ada
   At this time over 450 different languages or language extensions were in use. This increased the time and costs for developing new systems and in continually retraining people to become familiar with existing systems. Maintenance was also hampered by the lack of standardisation of support tools ( editors, compilers etc). All these factors led to the DoD realising it needed a single powerful language that could be used by all embedded computer suppliers.The developement work began in 1975 with the DoD producing a list of language requirements which was widely circulated; however no existing language specified the criteria so in 1977 DoD requested proposals for a new language. Unlike committee languages such as COBOL, the new language was the subject of a competition and extensive industry and academic review.
                                                                       
6. Lexical Conventionsa
   The lexical conventions describe the allowable character sequences that are used to create identifiers, numbers and the special values used in the language. Implementations must support 200 characters lexical elements at the least.
   Can be of any length (but can be restricted by an implementation).
   Can only contain characters, digits and underscores
   Must start with a character
   Are case insensitive
   E.g: Apple, apple, APPLE -- same identifier
   Max_Velocity_Attained
   Minor_Number_ -- illegal, trailing underscore
   Minor__Revision -- illegal, consecutive underscores
                                   
7. Ada 95 Reference Manual
   Ada is a programming language designed to support the construction of long-lived, highly reliable software systems. The language includes facilities to define packages of related types, objects, and operations. The packages may be parameterized and the types may be extended to support the construction of libraries of reusable, adaptable software components. The operations may be implemented as subprograms using conventional sequential control structures, or as entries that include synchronization of concurrent threads of control as part of their invocation. The language treats modularity in the physical sense as well, with a facility to support separate compilation. 
                                         
8. Hypertext Ada 95 Rationale
   Ada is a modern programming language suitable for those application areas which benefit from the discipline of organized development, that is, Software Engineering; it is a general purpose language with special applicability to real-time and embedded systems. Ada was originally developed by an international design team in response to requirements issued by the United States Department of Defense [DoD 78]. Ada 95 is a revised version of Ada updating the 1983 ANSI Ada standard [ANSI 83] and the equivalent 1987 ISO standard [ISO 87] in accordance with ANSI and ISO procedures. (ANSI is the American National Standards Institute and ISO is the International Standards Organization.) This present document describes the overall Rationale for the revision and includes tutorial information for the new features.