What is the best book for Ada 2022? How good are the books in general?
Thank you,
David
1 Like
Again, look at John Barnes’ book. It’s considered authoritative.
3 Likes
I just bought Barnes 2022 and what I got is something that looks like a mediocre quality digital print with bad typography for quite a lot of money. Disappointing…
1 Like
I can’t say anything about the typographic or print quality of that book, but I’m pretty sure the content is excellent. I’m pretty new to Ada, and I bought Programming in Ada 2012: With a Preview of Ada 2022 a few years ago. It is excellent. The ebooks from AdaCore are a bit more approachable (for being short) for getting started quickly, but Barnes’ book is more detailed (with useful and important details).
4 Likes
(The Ada 2012 edition, that I have, of the book is professionally typeset via Cambridge University Press.)
1 Like
Was it this one:
That was the one I got and it was very nice quality.
They’re selling this thing for 100GBP and it’s not even a hardcover.
The downloadable resources are mangled by some post-processing script.
Beyond comedy.
1 Like
Some problems that are visible in my copy, apparently printed digitally on demand by “Libri Plureos GmbH in Hamburg” (see the last page). ISBN is 9781009564779.
Print quality:
- The print itself seems to be low contrast (the letters are thinly printed)
- The lelters feel jagged, easity to see on a zoomed photo.
Typography also feels not good:
- For example boldface and regular letters feel as if they were from a different font family
- In the paragraph text whenever the identifier is quoted (bold or regular) those words do not really play together. It is difficult to mix sans-serif and serif together, but many technical books get it right.
- A minor issue - I don’t like how wider text is used in the prefaces and in the headings, it does not match the rest of the book.
Maybe your copies were printed somewhere else and only I got duped for 127.99 euro?
I have asked my friend Anna and she shared her digital copy with me.
These are the marked places zoomed in 900%
I don’t see such a big issue with the typography (but I do wish that the code was monospaced and had colored keywords 
Makes reading _alot_ easier)
2 Likes
Thank you! Regarding typography: I have a feeling that “regular” program text such as Integer is taller than the corresponding bold (keyword) text. Sure, this is exaggerated by the capital “B”, “D”, “S”.
Monospace could have been better, the indented sections seem to “dance randomly around” without it (“c” from the “record” does not align with the “d” from the corresponding “end” and not at all with the “D”, “S” and “F”).
- Mine says “Printed in the USA”
- I don’t’ see issues with type quality, but mine looks more or less the same as your photo
- The bold- and regular typefaces look like the same typeface in my copy, just different weights. They don’t bother me much, aside from my dislike of the use of sans serif as regular, reading text.
- I agree that monospace would have been much better for source code
1 Like
My copy (bought 2nd hand) appears to be printed on-demand by Ingram Content Group, UK.
2 Likes