5 ms·

I don't know if it's the algorithm but for the past few months i've been seeing bits and pieces in random places about ada. Is there a reason the language is se

I don't know if it's the algorithm but for the past few months i've been seeing bits and pieces in random places about ada. Is there a reason the language is seeing more traction lately? I would assume the whole White House "approved" languages had something to do with it

ajdude 2y ago
Ada's been steadily making a reassurance I think since safer languages like Rust had started to gain traction. It appeared for the first time ever on the stackoverflow survey for example. It used to be hampered down by confusing licenses but around 2021 those constraints were lifted when Adacore's "GNAT Community Edition" was retired. This was around the time Alire (works similar to if you combined Rustup with Cargo) came on the scene which meant getting the FSF version of the compiler was as trivial as running "alr toolchain --select". The most recent standard came out in 2022 along with a more centered community. Most of the ada community was living in a newsgroup (comp.lang.ada) until a year ago, and now ada-lang.io is gaining a lot of traction. Then Alire 2.0 just recently came out which made everything even more streamlined. Ada has been my favorite language for years, so I'm happy to see more people noticing it.
- brabel 2y ago
  I tried learning Ada a few years ago and was really put off by GNAT. Installation was something straight out of the 80's and I just forgot about it after a little fussing around without getting anything working. Great to know that's no longer the experience with Ada, I might finally get it and try to start a project using it.
- riku_iki 2y ago
  > Ada's been steadily making a reassurance I think since safer languages like Rust had started to gain traction Why one would use Ada now when it looks like there are much stronger contenders in this space: rust for close to metal and C#, Java, Go for slower programs?
  - sevagh 2y ago
    >Why one would use Ada now when it looks like there are much stronger contenders in this space: rust for close to metal and C#, Java, Go for slower programs? Define stronger? C#, Go, Java probably by wide use in enterprise/industry, but Rust? Power of sunshine and rainbows? Wishful thinking?
    - riku_iki 2y ago
      > but Rust? Power of sunshine and rainbows? Wishful thinking? adaptation, active community, more modern features, larger ecosystem
  - kitd 2y ago
    Oof! You were going so well .
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - fwip 2y ago
    Ada has features built in that those languages do not have. Off the top of my head, Ada has "restricted types" (e.g: you can say a function takes an integer of the range 5-15 only), as well as pre-and-post conditions you can annotate your procedure definition with.
    - riku_iki 2y ago
      It sounds like this can be implemented as some 3p libs, and not necessary be a part of language?
      - kevlar700 2y ago
        Rust tries with a crate and traits but it misses out on e.g. record memory overlays which are so powerful in Ada. Type design is beautifully intuitive for the main part in Ada too. Restricting your parameters with ease means there is less logic to write and mistakes and refactor fallout gets caught early.
spauldo 2y ago
My guess? There have been a few high profile security CVEs lately and the "why are we still using C" crowd is louder than usual. Ada's a viable alternative for performant system code, and it's kind of the underdog to Rust.
- nicce 2y ago
  Ada is not memory safe language tho, while it might make it a bit harder to introduce those bugs.
  - ajdude 2y ago
    Ada is memory safe if you just work with the stack or avoid Unchecked_Deallocation. Since functions can allocate and return entire arrays and other data structures completely on the stack, you don't need to mess with the heap that often (and when you do, you can also define your own memory pools). If you have to use dynamic allocation, you could also use the built in container libraries or controlled types for additional safety. Though if you want the kind of memory safety that Rust has, there's always SPARK (a subset of Ada).
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Is there a free version of SPARK? Proven correct code appeals to me, but I don't enjoy trying to get anything past purchasing.
      - ajdude 2y ago
        SPARK is free by default, and readily available. You can use it as-is in ada by adding " with SPARK_Mode => On" to your code; here's some examples: https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-spark/chapters/01_Overview.html#a-trivial-example https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-spark/chapters/01... You can install gnatprove with alire via "alr install gnatprove"
        mcguire 2y ago
Barrin92 2y ago
I saw a fairly popular programming Twitch streamer / Youtuber put out a bunch of Ada content recently, don't know if it's cause or effect but content creators seem to have a bit of influence these days. Was definitely the case with the recent htmx wave.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ajdude 2y ago

Ada's been steadily making a reassurance I think since safer languages like Rust had started to gain traction. It appeared for the first time ever on the stackoverflow survey for example. It used to be hampered down by confusing licenses but around 2021 those constraints were lifted when Adacore's "GNAT Community Edition" was retired. This was around the time Alire (works similar to if you combined Rustup with Cargo) came on the scene which meant getting the FSF version of the compiler was as trivial as running "alr toolchain --select". The most recent standard came out in 2022 along with a more centered community. Most of the ada community was living in a newsgroup (comp.lang.ada) until a year ago, and now ada-lang.io is gaining a lot of traction. Then Alire 2.0 just recently came out which made everything even more streamlined. Ada has been my favorite language for years, so I'm happy to see more people noticing it.

brabel 2y ago
I tried learning Ada a few years ago and was really put off by GNAT. Installation was something straight out of the 80's and I just forgot about it after a little fussing around without getting anything working. Great to know that's no longer the experience with Ada, I might finally get it and try to start a project using it.
riku_iki 2y ago
> Ada's been steadily making a reassurance I think since safer languages like Rust had started to gain traction Why one would use Ada now when it looks like there are much stronger contenders in this space: rust for close to metal and C#, Java, Go for slower programs?
- sevagh 2y ago
  >Why one would use Ada now when it looks like there are much stronger contenders in this space: rust for close to metal and C#, Java, Go for slower programs? Define stronger? C#, Go, Java probably by wide use in enterprise/industry, but Rust? Power of sunshine and rainbows? Wishful thinking?
  - riku_iki 2y ago
    > but Rust? Power of sunshine and rainbows? Wishful thinking? adaptation, active community, more modern features, larger ecosystem
- kitd 2y ago
  Oof! You were going so well .
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fwip 2y ago
  Ada has features built in that those languages do not have. Off the top of my head, Ada has "restricted types" (e.g: you can say a function takes an integer of the range 5-15 only), as well as pre-and-post conditions you can annotate your procedure definition with.
  - riku_iki 2y ago
    It sounds like this can be implemented as some 3p libs, and not necessary be a part of language?
    - kevlar700 2y ago
      Rust tries with a crate and traits but it misses out on e.g. record memory overlays which are so powerful in Ada. Type design is beautifully intuitive for the main part in Ada too. Restricting your parameters with ease means there is less logic to write and mistakes and refactor fallout gets caught early.

spauldo 2y ago

My guess? There have been a few high profile security CVEs lately and the "why are we still using C" crowd is louder than usual. Ada's a viable alternative for performant system code, and it's kind of the underdog to Rust.

nicce 2y ago
Ada is not memory safe language tho, while it might make it a bit harder to introduce those bugs.
- ajdude 2y ago
  Ada is memory safe if you just work with the stack or avoid Unchecked_Deallocation. Since functions can allocate and return entire arrays and other data structures completely on the stack, you don't need to mess with the heap that often (and when you do, you can also define your own memory pools). If you have to use dynamic allocation, you could also use the built in container libraries or controlled types for additional safety. Though if you want the kind of memory safety that Rust has, there's always SPARK (a subset of Ada).
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Is there a free version of SPARK? Proven correct code appeals to me, but I don't enjoy trying to get anything past purchasing.
    - ajdude 2y ago
      SPARK is free by default, and readily available. You can use it as-is in ada by adding " with SPARK_Mode => On" to your code; here's some examples: https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-spark/chapters/01_Overview.html#a-trivial-example https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-spark/chapters/01... You can install gnatprove with alire via "alr install gnatprove"
      - mcguire 2y ago

Barrin92 2y ago

I saw a fairly popular programming Twitch streamer / Youtuber put out a bunch of Ada content recently, don't know if it's cause or effect but content creators seem to have a bit of influence these days. Was definitely the case with the recent htmx wave.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]