Ada 95: Problem Solving and Program Design (3rd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: An excellent introduction to Ada95.
Review: Ada 95 is nicely written easy to understand book. I use this book in beginning Ada 95 course that I teach. It explains programming concepts and Ada 95 constructs in a interesting way by citing examples. It comes with a CD which has GNAT Ada95 compiler (for PC/MAC/UNIX) as well as key documentations like ARM, AARM, and Rationale in text, html and postscript format. I highly recommend this book to any one interested in learning Ada 95 from beginning. Great book!!!

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Summary: If your looking for a refrence book this is NOT it!
Review: I purchased this book in the hope that I could use it as a refrence as well as a tutorial for using the Gnat compiler. It failed in both cases. Don't get me wrong, This is a good book if you have time to read it cover to cover. I do not! Further, the book never goes into much depth about the copiler and most of the data on the disk was unaccessable. My conclusion is that if this is your first time with Ada and you have time to spare this book is for you. Every one else should look else where.

Rating:
Summary: If your looking for a refrence book this is NOT it!
Review: I purchased this book in the hope that I could use it as a refrence as well as a tutorial for using the Gnat compiler. It failed in both cases. Don't get me wrong, This is a good book if you have time to read it cover to cover. I do not! Further, the book never goes into much depth about the copiler and most of the data on the disk was unaccessable. My conclusion is that if this is your first time with Ada and you have time to spare this book is for you. Every one else should look else where.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent course book for the Ada programming language!!!
Review: I use this book in several Ada courses that I teach. This book is outstanding! The accompanying CD contains a validated compiler and all the examples in the textbook. The examples are excellent! Mark Oestmann

Rating:
Summary: Good text for an Intro to Ada95 class.
Review: The text is an organized, well written, generously exampled introduction to Ada95 for the novice. It provides a good basis for object oriented programming using Ada95 for generics and privates (ADTs), it does not cover as fully or clearly inheritance and/or polymorphism. This book is apropriate for a 200 level CS class. I personally was disappointed with the amount of clear differentiation between Ada83 and Ada95. The section on tasking dismisses conditional Select entry as being beyond the scope of the book. Variant records are given too large a play. though they are a good intro to the thinking behind Ada polymorphism, in practice (Ada83) they are too code intensive and have serious short comings when used as private data elements. Overall, I think that this is a good, complete Ada95 introductory text. It is NOT an in-depth push the boundaries of the language or a "here's how to go from Ada 83 to Ada 95."

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Summary: See lots of on-line materials for this book
Review: You can find an online instructors manual at www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/feldman/cs1-im. Also, a set of sections from the book dealing with "spider graphics" can be found at www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/mfeldman/spider. Finally, lots of materials from the freshman course I teach at The George Washington University--the course that uses this book--can be seen at www.seas.gwu.edu/classes/csci51