The Ada programming language has a reputation for being complex, large, and difficult. It is a running joke in my department, devoted to the development and support of an Ada compiler, that we should be armed with miniature Ada Language Reference Manuals attached to our belts, rather than the traditional slide rules and electronic calculators of other engineering professions.

The reputed complexity is partly the result of actual complexity, but partly the result of a general poor understanding of the rationale for the language and many of its features. Ada can be approached at numerous levels, from its rather simple Pascal-like subset to the full language, including generics, tasking, numerics, and exception handling.

This book is an attempt to address some of these difficulties. It stratifies the language, or at least the expected level of understanding of its readers, and tries to involve the reader by presenting the language more in terms of questions than of answers. This forces the reader to think about the reasons for the way Ada is, and accordingly helps her or him understand and remember the language better.

This book presents problems to the reader at four levels: novice, programmer, designer, and language lawyer. Answers to the problems are presented in a standardized fashion. A key feature of this approach is reference to the Ada Language Reference Manual; a key element of Ada education at any level is education in reading this document. Once this struck me as an unfortunate symptom of the language’s complexity. Recently, I have noticed the same tendency with ANSI C. The availability of a good language reference makes its use as a base for all other language discussions standard, and the authors pay careful attention to this reference.

Ada is not a frozen language. Various groups, most notably the Ada Rapporteur Group, issue decisions concerning ambiguous aspects of the Ada Language Reference Manual. These decisions crystallize in Ada issue rulings, and the authors have taken care to incorporate the results of these decisions as well. The reader is thus exposed to the process of language review as well as to its results.

I recommend this book highly as a means of gracefully learning Ada at the level one desires. It is a standard reference in my department’s library.