Ada Tutorials

Here are some on-line Ada tutorials expressly designed for self-study:

1. Lovelace is a free (no charge) self-directed Ada 95 tutorial available on the World Wide Web (WWW). Lovelace assumes that the user already knows some other algorithmic programming language (such as C, C++, or Pascal). Lovelace is interactive; it contains a number of short sections, and most short sections end with a question (to help ensure that you've understood the section's material). Lovelace can be used directly from the WWW, downloaded, or run from CD-ROM. Lovelace was developed by David A. Wheeler.

2. Learn Ada on the Web (LAW) by Dr. Fintan Culwin was developed to freely provide Ada training on the World Wide Web. LAW is concerned with initial software development education rather than with helping programmers who already know other computer languages. Also, LAW is concerned as much with providing software engineering tools over the Web as with presenting information regarding Ada. Dr. Culwin believes that the Lovelace and LAW projects are complementary rather than needless duplication of each other, since their target users are so different.

   LAW includes an interesting capability to interactively create Ada programs remotely over the Web; you might want to use this LAW capability even if you choose to use another tutorial.

   Dr. Culwin is at South Bank University, London, and may be contacted at fintan@vax.sbu.ac.uk.

3. The C/C++ Programmers Ada Tutorial is a short hypertext tutorial for programmers who have a C or C++ style programming language background. It was written by Simon Johnson, with some additional text by Tucker Taft.

4. Ada-Tutr is a shareware interactive Ada tutor developed by John Herro of Software Innovations Technology. You can download it from the Ada-Tutr web site, the Ada-Tutr ftp site (ftp://members.aol.com/AdaTutor/). You can download it by calling the SaddleBag BBS, 1-407-773-0831, and log in with the name Ada Tutor and the password tutor. The Public Ada Library's copy of Ada-Tutr (mirror) is another way to retrieve Ada-Tutr. There is also an older version of Ada-Tutr for Ada 83 (mirror). AdaTutr has a number of exercises that give a more complete understanding of Ada but will take more time to complete than a tutor without such exercises (such as Lovelace).

5. HOT_Ada is a hypertext self-directed Ada tutorial for PCs or Apple Macs from Stage Harbor Software. It's available on two floppy disks, and is available for a relatively small price. HOT_Ada is not directly viewable on the WWW, but information about HOT_Ada and how to order HOT_Ada is. See the HOT_Ada home page for more information.

6. Coronado Enterprises Tutorials are shareware tutorials. They have an Ada 83 tutorial available (the suggested fee is US$15).

7. Dale Stanbrough's Introduction is a set of notes that provide a simple introduction to Ada. This material has been used for a few years as a simple introduction to the language.

8. Coronado Enterprises has a shareware Ada 83 tutorial, as well as tutorials for other modern third generation languages.

9. Amarjit Basra's tutorial (basraas@aston.ac.uk) is a small Ada95 tutorial developed as part of his MSc degree.

Here are some other Ada-related educational materials that you may find helpful:

1. Introducing Ada95 is a set of slides about Ada 95 by Richard Conn. Here's a quote from Richard Conn:

   In the spirit of freely supporting the Ada community, I have released the following course. There is no restriction whatsoever on its use and distribution (unlike other courseware and items).

   This is a day-long short course that introduces Ada95. The purpose of the course is to explore the Ada95 language, including its facilities for object-oriented design and programming, real-time programming, distributed processing, and other domains. The course will concentrate on the practical aspects of applying the features of Ada95 to the software development process. Numerous examples of the language are presented.

   Richard Conn's tutorial is available in Zipped Powerpoint Postscript format. (736K). A README file accompanies the tutorial.

   Free viewers for both Macintosh (602K) and PCs running Windows (1,092K) are available for those who do not own Powerpoint.

2. Ada 95: The Next Generation, a slide set by Mike Kamrad, is available through the SIGAda server. It is available in both Powerpoint 4.0 for the Macintosh format (140K) and Powerpoint 4.0 for Windows format (84K). Free viewers for both Macintosh (602K) and PCs running Windows (1,092K) are available for those who do not own Powerpoint.

3. ASSET maintains a collection of Ada-related courseware; see ASSET's WWW page for more information.

4. Other PAL Courseware (mirror) products are available by FTP (in addition to AdaTutr and Lovelace, listed above). Walnut Creek mirrors the PAL onto its Ada CD-ROM. A copy of the Ada CD-ROM is available on-line.

5. A 1994 broad area announcement on Ada educational products being developed is available.

6. Frances L. Van Scoy has developed some course material for initial Computer Science classes using Ada. Her home page has links to such courseware.

7. There are many Ada-related books available.

8. The Catalog of Resources for Education in Ada and Software Engineering (CREASE) lists institutions and organizations that provide such training, as well as other material relevant to learning Ada. The CREASE files are available at the Ada Information Clearinghouse (AdaIC).

9. An "Academic Ada" package is being developed by Intermetrics. The expected date for the beta version for Windows NT is March 1996, with final versions out May 1996 (Windows NT) and Summer 1996 (other platforms).

These lists are not an endorsement of any of these products, just information that I hope you will find useful.

From here you can go to the:

• Lovelace home page.

• Ada Resources List (at the "Home of the Brave Ada Programmers").