For my 2 cents, the worst semester I ever had teaching Ada at the Air Force
Academy was the semester I had to use Skansholm.  There were far too many
problems with the code in the book for it to be a useful reference for
beginners (I think he never really updated it to Ada 95).  Depending on your
level of expertise, Feldman's text is reasonable for a CS 1 course; we use a
Chamillard custom print for a non-majors course, Cohen is good for people
with lots of programming experience, and there is an Ada 95 minimanul that
accompanies a McGraw Hill programming languages text that looked reasonable
(although I never taught from it).

--Martin

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Feldman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, February 25, 2000 1:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: learning


[said Greg]
>
> Colin,
> My wife really liked Skansholm's (??) Ada From The Beginning.
> Back when it was the recommended text at Adelaide Uni.
>
> There is an updated Ada95 from the beginning but I have no
> direct experience with it.
>
> Greg

I'm a competing author, so I'm hesitant to comment on the work
of my competitors, but in this case I must warn that the book
Greg refers to was published in 1997, and would be a good book
except that the code is obviously untested and has too many
serious errors for a 3rd edition. As far as I know, Skansholm is
not revising this book, and does not put corrected code on the
net or anything like that. He has written books for other
languages, so my guess is that he has simply walked away from
Ada as a "small market".

Bottom line: It's a decent intro to the language, but don't
expect the code to work.

Mike Feldman