4 ms·

I believe I'm one of very few people to ever commit Ada code into the google monorepo

exdsq 5y ago
That's pretty cool! What are they using Ada for? I'd love to have a reason to learn and use Ada. Spark looks really cool, I love invariants, it just seems the perfect language for me.
- changoplatanero 5y ago
  They had acquired a company that had written all their code in Ada. The company was founded by a guy who learned to program from doing defense contracts as a grad student. So, that's why he decided to do everything in Ada.
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    Interesting. I had a similar experience. Different outcome. I _was_ the grad student who did a couple of military/medical projects in Ada back in the early 90s. Loved it. Tried to take a startup down the Ada route for a non-safety critical project mid 2010s and failed to convince people. IIRC it was the bus-factor - "no one else knows this shit and if you leave who we gonna hire?". Curious - how did maintaining an Ada project work out for you?
    - ajxs 5y ago
      The first programming language I put serious time into was C. When I first found Ada I was struck by how easy its syntax was to understand. I think that if you needed Ada talent in a pinch you could do well to recruit experienced programmers of all stripes and train them in Ada. The language might have its peculiarities, I don't think it's a hard language though.
      - touisteur 5y ago
        That's exactly what we do, hire for developer chops, train for Ada, use existing codebases as inspiration, and let's goooo.
        exdsq 5y ago
        Who's "we"? Keen to find companies using Ada :)
        touisteur 5y ago
        Defence and infrastructure stuff, near Paris France. There's also people at BNP or SocGen. Shoot a mail or dm at AdaCore or on Ada mailing lists, they sometimes help relay job offers...
- cable2600 5y ago
  It uses Blackbox technology and was based on Pascal. It was built on DoD standards. I did Ada programming in the late 1990s as a federal contractor. We used Janus ADA for DOS which cost $10,000 per license. Try one of the free and open source ones unless you have a company that can buy a license from a commercial one for you.
- asddubs 5y ago
  if you're into FPGAs, you could contribute to the ghdl compiler, which is written in ada (which I suppose makes sense since vhdl itself is also derived from ada).
- thetallstick 5y ago
  If you're into embedded control Ada is a pretty good choice. https://hackaday.com/2019/09/10/why-ada-is-the-language-you-want-to-be-programming-your-systems-with/ https://hackaday.com/2019/09/10/why-ada-is-the-language-you-... "Today, software written in Ada forms the backbone of not only military hardware, but also commercial projects like avionics and air-traffic control systems. Ada code controls rockets like the Ariane 4 and 5, many satellites, and countless other systems where small glitches can have major consequences." Here is a hobbyist example: https://www.hackster.io/ankurverma608/running-a-finite-state-machine-on-stm32-through-ada-f2757a https://www.hackster.io/ankurverma608/running-a-finite-state...

That's pretty cool! What are they using Ada for? I'd love to have a reason to learn and use Ada. Spark looks really cool, I love invariants, it just seems the perfect language for me.

changoplatanero 5y ago
They had acquired a company that had written all their code in Ada. The company was founded by a guy who learned to program from doing defense contracts as a grad student. So, that's why he decided to do everything in Ada.
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  Interesting. I had a similar experience. Different outcome. I _was_ the grad student who did a couple of military/medical projects in Ada back in the early 90s. Loved it. Tried to take a startup down the Ada route for a non-safety critical project mid 2010s and failed to convince people. IIRC it was the bus-factor - "no one else knows this shit and if you leave who we gonna hire?". Curious - how did maintaining an Ada project work out for you?
  - ajxs 5y ago
    The first programming language I put serious time into was C. When I first found Ada I was struck by how easy its syntax was to understand. I think that if you needed Ada talent in a pinch you could do well to recruit experienced programmers of all stripes and train them in Ada. The language might have its peculiarities, I don't think it's a hard language though.
    - touisteur 5y ago
      That's exactly what we do, hire for developer chops, train for Ada, use existing codebases as inspiration, and let's goooo.
      - exdsq 5y ago
        Who's "we"? Keen to find companies using Ada :)
        touisteur 5y ago
        Defence and infrastructure stuff, near Paris France. There's also people at BNP or SocGen. Shoot a mail or dm at AdaCore or on Ada mailing lists, they sometimes help relay job offers...
cable2600 5y ago
It uses Blackbox technology and was based on Pascal. It was built on DoD standards. I did Ada programming in the late 1990s as a federal contractor. We used Janus ADA for DOS which cost $10,000 per license. Try one of the free and open source ones unless you have a company that can buy a license from a commercial one for you.
asddubs 5y ago
if you're into FPGAs, you could contribute to the ghdl compiler, which is written in ada (which I suppose makes sense since vhdl itself is also derived from ada).
thetallstick 5y ago
If you're into embedded control Ada is a pretty good choice. https://hackaday.com/2019/09/10/why-ada-is-the-language-you-want-to-be-programming-your-systems-with/ https://hackaday.com/2019/09/10/why-ada-is-the-language-you-... "Today, software written in Ada forms the backbone of not only military hardware, but also commercial projects like avionics and air-traffic control systems. Ada code controls rockets like the Ariane 4 and 5, many satellites, and countless other systems where small glitches can have major consequences." Here is a hobbyist example: https://www.hackster.io/ankurverma608/running-a-finite-state-machine-on-stm32-through-ada-f2757a https://www.hackster.io/ankurverma608/running-a-finite-state...