First post
I'm starting a new blog about learning the Ada programming language.
The intention is not to write very extensively about the progress, but rather more like random remarks and interesting findings along the way.
I like different (programming) languages and every now and then want to try out something new. Or in this case, a rather old, yet evolving language. While first version was introduced already in 1983, there has been new language versions, in 1995, 2005 and 2012. And another one is coming up, some time near 2020. So, Ada is not dead, as someone might incorrectly tell you!
I have professional history with C, Python, Java and C#. The current go-to language for me is Scala. After Python and Scala, one might wonder, why on earth would I be interested in learning a language, which, in comparison, is quite verbose with all it's begin and end clauses, and is case InSensiTive, and doesn't use implicit type conversions to smooth your way forward? Well, after you can get past all the feelings those facts might cause you, there is some pretty nice stuff behind.
For long I've been in the search for intense code brevity, where a languages like Python or F# really shine. I now think that I have might been even overly fixated by the syntax cleanliness.
While functional way of coding might get you a lot of stuff done with little amount of code, I've found out that it could be quite wearing to read that code after a while. The amount of information in a line of Python or Scala code can be very dense. Coming back in six months to read your code might lead to a situation, where you indeed can easily read the technical functionality, but it still doesn't help you to recall the overall intention of that particular line of code.
Especially with Scala there might be so much going on. Type inference (leave the type information out of the way), implicit conversions and other outright "magic", that will require some browsing back and forth with your IDE before recalling what's supposed to be happening. I'm not saying it's all bad or so, but I have realized that it's not all pure bliss either. Alas, now there suddenly is room in my mind for little more verbose approach.
The intention is not to write very extensively about the progress, but rather more like random remarks and interesting findings along the way.
I like different (programming) languages and every now and then want to try out something new. Or in this case, a rather old, yet evolving language. While first version was introduced already in 1983, there has been new language versions, in 1995, 2005 and 2012. And another one is coming up, some time near 2020. So, Ada is not dead, as someone might incorrectly tell you!
I have professional history with C, Python, Java and C#. The current go-to language for me is Scala. After Python and Scala, one might wonder, why on earth would I be interested in learning a language, which, in comparison, is quite verbose with all it's begin and end clauses, and is case InSensiTive, and doesn't use implicit type conversions to smooth your way forward? Well, after you can get past all the feelings those facts might cause you, there is some pretty nice stuff behind.
For long I've been in the search for intense code brevity, where a languages like Python or F# really shine. I now think that I have might been even overly fixated by the syntax cleanliness.
While functional way of coding might get you a lot of stuff done with little amount of code, I've found out that it could be quite wearing to read that code after a while. The amount of information in a line of Python or Scala code can be very dense. Coming back in six months to read your code might lead to a situation, where you indeed can easily read the technical functionality, but it still doesn't help you to recall the overall intention of that particular line of code.
Especially with Scala there might be so much going on. Type inference (leave the type information out of the way), implicit conversions and other outright "magic", that will require some browsing back and forth with your IDE before recalling what's supposed to be happening. I'm not saying it's all bad or so, but I have realized that it's not all pure bliss either. Alas, now there suddenly is room in my mind for little more verbose approach.
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