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Ada had a lot of companies that missed the boat on earlier languages seeing their opportunity to really get the monetization right this time. It helped that Ad

Ada had a lot of companies that missed the boat on earlier languages seeing their opportunity to really get the monetization right this time. It helped that Ada was so complex that some rando in his basement couldn't write a good compiler for it like they could with C, BASIC, Pascal, Fortran, LISP, etc... It was expensive to develop so it was expensive to purchase. Even better, such a huge compiler for a new language is doomed to be buggy, especially at first, so they can make even more money on expensive support contracts. The only thing missing was a reason for programmers to switch to it. There were promises that the code would be safe, and that if it compiled it should just work, but the buggy nature of the compilers undercut these promises. Actually, it sounds a lot like Rust minus the buggy compiler part. The idea that the defense contractors would drive the industry over-estimates just how much code they write. Sure it's millions of lines every year, but compared to worldwide C development it is a drop in the bucket.

ajxs 4y ago
> ...some rando in his basement couldn't write a good compiler for it like they could with C, BASIC, Pascal, Fortran, LISP... I see Ada as having a fundamentally different philosophy from languages like C and BASIC. Ada compilers were allowed to not implement all of the standard library features, and many didn't. > ...such a huge compiler for a new language is doomed to be buggy, especially at first... Was this actually what happened though? There was always the Ada Conformity Assessment Test Suite (ACATS), which tested a compiler's implementation. If compilers ever hindered Ada's adoption, it wasn't because they were buggy, it was how expensive and resource intensive they were. > There were promises that the code would be safe, and that if it compiled it should just work, but the buggy nature of the compilers undercut these promises... ...except that it did kind of work in the end though, didn't it? Ada is still very widely used in a lot of places, and has been for a long time. Lots of new code is still being written in Ada too. There's lots of literature available about how well Ada integrates in environments where code is audited against safety regulations. > The idea that the defense contractors would drive the industry over-estimates just how much code they write. This is certainly true now, but was this true when Ada was being designed in the late-70s/early-80s? My understanding is that C didn't become the dominant embedded-systems language until much later. I wasn't there, mind you. I could have some historic details wrong. Edit: It's worth adding that of the languages the parent poster mentioned above, the only language which still sees mainstream use is C. I know Fortran and LISP have very healthy communities and enjoy a lot of use in niche industries, of course. I don't think this is what the parent poster meant exactly, however it's very common to hear people talk about Ada as a failure on the basis that it didn't completely overtake the software industry. You don't really hear people condemn BASIC, or Pascal in the same way though, even though Ada enjoys much more modern usage.
- nradov 4y ago
  Even the defense industry is migrating away from Ada. The F-22 Raptor software was mostly written in Ada. The F-35 Lighting II (JSF) software is mostly written in C++. While the JSF program has had some major software delays, overall the choice of C++ seems to have worked out.
  - ajxs 4y ago
    This is true. Ironically, when we're talking about an area as heavily regulated as aerospace, I don't think language choice matters as much as it does elsewhere. My understanding is that if you're aiming for certification with a standard like DO-178C and have to demonstrate compliance on a line-by-line basis, ultimately only compliance matters, not what language it's written in. Some languages will achieve that result more easily than others though. Someone please correct me if I'm off track here.
- jandrese 4y ago
  While I never programmed Ada myself (there were no compilers I could afford), the people I knew who did complained bitterly that the compiler was always tripping over itself and making their life difficult. Well, even more difficult since they were stuck writing Ada. This was the late 90s though, so the situation hopefully improved over time.
WorldMaker 4y ago
> The idea that the defense contractors would drive the industry over-estimates just how much code they write. Sure it's millions of lines every year, but compared to worldwide C development it is a drop in the bucket. The implication I was making, in case it wasn't overt enough, had a lot more to do with money/budget/revenue than lines of code. The US DOD has massive budgets and over-spends those budgets on all kinds of wild things (so long as they can pass Congressional oversight, at least). The amount of money the US DOD spends on defense contractors will always attract a lot of attention, even if the amount of code that the US DOD gets back from all that spending will always be a drop in the bucket to the overall software industry. A different, unrelated, implication that is often used is that the DOD has increased requirements for safety, security, and oversight and that "defense-grade" or "defense-level" signifies something stronger than consumer-grade. You can see some of that in the 432's attempted marketing: imagine having access to "defense-grade" Ada-capable hardware in the microcomputer form factor at a fraction of then-current mainframe costs. Of course, in reality, not everyone needs "defense-grade" and the "dream" of using the same language and similar tools to the US DOD never had quite the appeal that Intel marketers must have hoped for. But you can certainly see why Intel marketers might have thought there some advantage in "defense grade". The US DOD and its defense contractors have never exactly "led" the industry, but they've certainly had a large shadow over of it for most of computing history. (Says the person sending this little collection of thoughts and opinions over a vast and incredible inter-network of networks that began as a Defense advanced research project.)

ajxs 4y ago

> ...some rando in his basement couldn't write a good compiler for it like they could with C, BASIC, Pascal, Fortran, LISP... I see Ada as having a fundamentally different philosophy from languages like C and BASIC. Ada compilers were allowed to not implement all of the standard library features, and many didn't. > ...such a huge compiler for a new language is doomed to be buggy, especially at first... Was this actually what happened though? There was always the Ada Conformity Assessment Test Suite (ACATS), which tested a compiler's implementation. If compilers ever hindered Ada's adoption, it wasn't because they were buggy, it was how expensive and resource intensive they were. > There were promises that the code would be safe, and that if it compiled it should just work, but the buggy nature of the compilers undercut these promises... ...except that it did kind of work in the end though, didn't it? Ada is still very widely used in a lot of places, and has been for a long time. Lots of new code is still being written in Ada too. There's lots of literature available about how well Ada integrates in environments where code is audited against safety regulations. > The idea that the defense contractors would drive the industry over-estimates just how much code they write. This is certainly true now, but was this true when Ada was being designed in the late-70s/early-80s? My understanding is that C didn't become the dominant embedded-systems language until much later. I wasn't there, mind you. I could have some historic details wrong. Edit: It's worth adding that of the languages the parent poster mentioned above, the only language which still sees mainstream use is C. I know Fortran and LISP have very healthy communities and enjoy a lot of use in niche industries, of course. I don't think this is what the parent poster meant exactly, however it's very common to hear people talk about Ada as a failure on the basis that it didn't completely overtake the software industry. You don't really hear people condemn BASIC, or Pascal in the same way though, even though Ada enjoys much more modern usage.

nradov 4y ago
Even the defense industry is migrating away from Ada. The F-22 Raptor software was mostly written in Ada. The F-35 Lighting II (JSF) software is mostly written in C++. While the JSF program has had some major software delays, overall the choice of C++ seems to have worked out.
- ajxs 4y ago
  This is true. Ironically, when we're talking about an area as heavily regulated as aerospace, I don't think language choice matters as much as it does elsewhere. My understanding is that if you're aiming for certification with a standard like DO-178C and have to demonstrate compliance on a line-by-line basis, ultimately only compliance matters, not what language it's written in. Some languages will achieve that result more easily than others though. Someone please correct me if I'm off track here.
jandrese 4y ago
While I never programmed Ada myself (there were no compilers I could afford), the people I knew who did complained bitterly that the compiler was always tripping over itself and making their life difficult. Well, even more difficult since they were stuck writing Ada. This was the late 90s though, so the situation hopefully improved over time.

WorldMaker 4y ago

> The idea that the defense contractors would drive the industry over-estimates just how much code they write. Sure it's millions of lines every year, but compared to worldwide C development it is a drop in the bucket. The implication I was making, in case it wasn't overt enough, had a lot more to do with money/budget/revenue than lines of code. The US DOD has massive budgets and over-spends those budgets on all kinds of wild things (so long as they can pass Congressional oversight, at least). The amount of money the US DOD spends on defense contractors will always attract a lot of attention, even if the amount of code that the US DOD gets back from all that spending will always be a drop in the bucket to the overall software industry. A different, unrelated, implication that is often used is that the DOD has increased requirements for safety, security, and oversight and that "defense-grade" or "defense-level" signifies something stronger than consumer-grade. You can see some of that in the 432's attempted marketing: imagine having access to "defense-grade" Ada-capable hardware in the microcomputer form factor at a fraction of then-current mainframe costs. Of course, in reality, not everyone needs "defense-grade" and the "dream" of using the same language and similar tools to the US DOD never had quite the appeal that Intel marketers must have hoped for. But you can certainly see why Intel marketers might have thought there some advantage in "defense grade". The US DOD and its defense contractors have never exactly "led" the industry, but they've certainly had a large shadow over of it for most of computing history. (Says the person sending this little collection of thoughts and opinions over a vast and incredible inter-network of networks that began as a Defense advanced research project.)