Ada Essentials
Overview, Examples and Glossary
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About the Book
This compact volume describes all of Ada's program units, statements and data types. It can serve as an introductory text or as a reference work. The use of each language feature is illustrated in a small working program. A comprehensive glossary/index provides users with a fast, easy way to locate examples and illustrations. Example programs are depicted graphically, supporting the metaphor that an Ada program is "a set of lego blocks smapped together."
The text is organized in six chapters, three appendices, references and the glossary/index. The first four chapters cover the essentials. The final two chapters introduce Ada's support for object oriented programming and Ada's built-in mechanisms for supporting concurrency and synchronization. This volume is intended as the first in the "LearnAda" series. See http://www.learnada.com for future announcements.
About the Author
Bard S. Crawford is an aerospace engineer who has specialized in the field of navigation and control systems for spacecraft and missiles. During the 1960's he was a member of MIT's Apollo Project team that designed the system used for navigating to the moon and back. While an employee at TASC (The Analytic Sciences Corporation) he was project leader on a number of projects sponsored by the Air Force, Navy, NASA and the Ada Joint Program Office. During the 80's and 90's his professional interests focused increasingly on software, object technology and the Ada programming language.
In 1994 he started a one-person business called Stage Harbor Software and began producing a series of online tutorials called "HOT_Ada: Hypergraphic tutorials on Object Technology and Ada 95." More recently he has begun the development of the "LearnAda" series of volumes designed to be available in three formats: printed books, portable digital format (PDF) versions of the books, and coordinated sets of web pages available through the internet at http://www.learnada.com.
He holds BS, MS and PhD degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. Dr. Crawford lives in Lexington, Massachusetts with his wife, the former Jane Tibbetts. They are proud parents of four grown children: two working in the software field, one professional actor, and one preparing for a career in the ministry.