Ada/Overview

Introduction
Ada was developed under a US Department of Defense contract from 1977 to 1983. Its main goal was to develop a language to replace, in sorts, the various hundreds of languages then used by the Department of Defense. What resulted is strong-typed and modular programming language that is used widely in mission critical systems. It was originally targeted at embedded and real-time systems, but as seen a wide range of applications, especially in the defense community.

Prerequisites

 * 1) A basic knowledge of programming. Familiarity with an Algol-based language, such as C, C++, or Pascal, will be useful.
 * 2) A Linux operating system, preferably Ubuntu. This can be run as a virtual machine with software like Oracle's VM VirtualBox.
 * 3) Strong desire to learn.
 * 4) Patience and time to learn. No language is learned overnight and one certainly cannot expect to develop full-blown applications after only 2 weeks of learning any language.

Course description
This course is designed to introduce the student to the basics of the Ada programming language, enough to understand what is going on and how to further proceed with learning more about its applications. This course is not designed, as of yet, to introduce the student to the full power of Ada. Most program examples are text-based console applications developed on the Linux operating system.

Links

 * Wikipedia: Ada (programming language)
 * Wikibooks:Ada programming tutorial