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I'm seeing a lot more Ada posts on the front page recently. Was there a big investment in Ada recently or an acquisition where its marketing machinery is starti

I'm seeing a lot more Ada posts on the front page recently. Was there a big investment in Ada recently or an acquisition where its marketing machinery is starting to chug along? Or was there a meaningful release or something?

bluGill 2y ago
There was an interesting conference where Ada was presented. Ada marketing has gotten better over the years as well. Still not enough that I'm trying it, but it remain intrigued.
jghn 2y ago
My assumption has been that Rust's rise to prominence here has led people to investigate & reflect more on prior art in the realm of "safety" in the PL world. This leads them to Ada. And as there's a general trend in HN to look at less traveled roads it starts popping up here. the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon starts to kick in and creates a feedback loop
- coliveira 2y ago
  No, if it was for the bandwagon in social media, everybody would be forced to use Rust. However companies that work on government contracts have for a long time used Ada, and they have a lot of software and investment there. So, with the recent government advisories, the Ada tech is coming back to fill that opportunity.
andrewl-hn 2y ago
Even with administration change in the US there is a long-term initiative across multiple agencies to eventually move to more robust software, and a part of it is the push towards more safe programming languages (where safe means fewer memory issues, fewer vulnerabilities, less bugs in general, etc.). Similar government initiatives now start in Europe and elsewhere in the world, too. This regulatory change is not new, it has been going on for years and will take more years to finish. And even without a regulatory pressure, the migration would happen eventually. Look at the cars. As they get more features like adaptive cruise control and various driver assistance features, the need for software that runs with no lag and is reacting to surroundings correctly and quickly becomes absolutely critical. Car companies now can go out of business simply because their software is buggy. The car vendors now produce more software than ever, and they are in dire need for better programming tools than ever. Languages like Java, Scala, C#, Go, etc. cover many scenarios like cloud services and, for example, car entertainment system. But for devices, microcontrollers, real-time low latency systems etc. C and C++ have been the go-to languages for decades, and now it is starting to change, because turns out it is very, very hard to write correct, bug-free, safe, and secure software in these languages. Rust is one language that is getting into this market: Rust Foundation established a Safety-Critical Rust Consortium last year, for example, and Ferrocene compiler has a bunch of certifications done already. Ada is another option that would work for many such use-cases, too. The selling point of Ada is that it's been around for a long time and many vendors already have established compilers and tools with all appropriate certifications and qualifications done for all sorts of industries. So, it's not really "Ada is interesting" and more "Languages that can replace C and C++ are interesting".
- imglorp 2y ago
  The new administration has removed the memory safe programming languages memo. https://web.archive.org/web/20250118013136/https://www.whitehouse.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024/02/26/press-release-technical-report/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250118013136/https://www.white...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - _a9 2y ago
    The Whitehouse website gets cleared for the incoming administration. The page was moved to: https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024/02/26/press-release-technical-report/ https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024...
  - Lucretia9 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - steveklabnik 2y ago
    A lot of this movement continued to happen under the previous Trump administration; we have no idea what is going to happen, there are good arguments that it may go away, but also ones that argue it will accelerate or intensify. We’ll see.
- Lucretia9 2y ago
  That's why Toyota moved to Ada, because their C or C++ software caused crashes.
- 999900000999 2y ago
  Am I a bad programmer if rust is really difficult for me. I desperately want to learn a low-level language, since I think I'm missing something hanging out with my buddies C#, Python and NodeJS. C and C++ are too difficult, Rust is also hard. I think my best bet is Zig at this point.
LiamPowell 2y ago
The popularity of Rust has caused a lot of people to start taking safety more seriously. Ada is the safety language for everything except memory and thread safety (they're pretty safe still, but not completely like in Rust). I think some of it also comes from the number of new programming languages that have come out over the last few years. It's common for people to point at Ada as a reference for how to address problems that come up in C-like languages since Ada already solved so many problems in the 80's.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
People have gotten fed up with smug rustaceans shouting about 40 year old technology.
- unshavedyak 2y ago
  If only that 40 year old technology could have captured attention in the last 40 years.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    I don't think an Adacian missionary has ever knocked on my door. Rustafarians were twice a week at some point.
    - sophacles 2y ago
      Maybe the rust folks realized that 40 more years and billions of dollars wasted on "we'll get pointers right this time and not leave the same old gaping holes in our new software" left people receptive to new things? They probably have another good reason to advocate too - 90% of anti-rust sentiment is "Gross, people like using it so much they tell others that they like it".
      - spoiler 2y ago
        IMO The language has merits regardless of a few (if not very few) bad apples in the community, and its technical merits should be the primary lense for evaluating it as a choice.
      - throwaway314155 2y ago
        > 90% of anti-rust sentiment is "Gross, people like using it so much they tell others that they like it". More like "Gross, people like using it so much they imply (or just outright say) other languages are inferior." edit: apparently I'm "posting too fast", so I'll reply in an edit. What you (sophocles) said is effectively equivalent to "other languages are inferior", although I appreciate how you twisted the words up like that. Computers can be used effectively in a wide variety of languages. Do some languages age poorly? Sure. But not all of them.
dismalaf 2y ago
I think Rust opened up a ton of interest in languages that are as fast as C++ but safer... The fact that Ada was doing a lot of stuff that Rust is trying to do now but decades earlier is particularly interesting.
throwaway81523 2y ago
I would say Ada got a lot nicer when Ada 2012 was released, and interest picked up since then. Around the same time, C++ got a lot nicer with the release of C++11.
m463 2y ago
Self driving cars?

bluGill 2y ago

There was an interesting conference where Ada was presented. Ada marketing has gotten better over the years as well. Still not enough that I'm trying it, but it remain intrigued.

jghn 2y ago

My assumption has been that Rust's rise to prominence here has led people to investigate & reflect more on prior art in the realm of "safety" in the PL world. This leads them to Ada. And as there's a general trend in HN to look at less traveled roads it starts popping up here. the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon starts to kick in and creates a feedback loop

coliveira 2y ago
No, if it was for the bandwagon in social media, everybody would be forced to use Rust. However companies that work on government contracts have for a long time used Ada, and they have a lot of software and investment there. So, with the recent government advisories, the Ada tech is coming back to fill that opportunity.

andrewl-hn 2y ago

Even with administration change in the US there is a long-term initiative across multiple agencies to eventually move to more robust software, and a part of it is the push towards more safe programming languages (where safe means fewer memory issues, fewer vulnerabilities, less bugs in general, etc.). Similar government initiatives now start in Europe and elsewhere in the world, too. This regulatory change is not new, it has been going on for years and will take more years to finish. And even without a regulatory pressure, the migration would happen eventually. Look at the cars. As they get more features like adaptive cruise control and various driver assistance features, the need for software that runs with no lag and is reacting to surroundings correctly and quickly becomes absolutely critical. Car companies now can go out of business simply because their software is buggy. The car vendors now produce more software than ever, and they are in dire need for better programming tools than ever. Languages like Java, Scala, C#, Go, etc. cover many scenarios like cloud services and, for example, car entertainment system. But for devices, microcontrollers, real-time low latency systems etc. C and C++ have been the go-to languages for decades, and now it is starting to change, because turns out it is very, very hard to write correct, bug-free, safe, and secure software in these languages. Rust is one language that is getting into this market: Rust Foundation established a Safety-Critical Rust Consortium last year, for example, and Ferrocene compiler has a bunch of certifications done already. Ada is another option that would work for many such use-cases, too. The selling point of Ada is that it's been around for a long time and many vendors already have established compilers and tools with all appropriate certifications and qualifications done for all sorts of industries. So, it's not really "Ada is interesting" and more "Languages that can replace C and C++ are interesting".

imglorp 2y ago
The new administration has removed the memory safe programming languages memo. https://web.archive.org/web/20250118013136/https://www.whitehouse.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024/02/26/press-release-technical-report/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250118013136/https://www.white...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- _a9 2y ago
  The Whitehouse website gets cleared for the incoming administration. The page was moved to: https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024/02/26/press-release-technical-report/ https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024...
- Lucretia9 2y ago
  [flagged]
- steveklabnik 2y ago
  A lot of this movement continued to happen under the previous Trump administration; we have no idea what is going to happen, there are good arguments that it may go away, but also ones that argue it will accelerate or intensify. We’ll see.
Lucretia9 2y ago
That's why Toyota moved to Ada, because their C or C++ software caused crashes.
999900000999 2y ago
Am I a bad programmer if rust is really difficult for me. I desperately want to learn a low-level language, since I think I'm missing something hanging out with my buddies C#, Python and NodeJS. C and C++ are too difficult, Rust is also hard. I think my best bet is Zig at this point.

LiamPowell 2y ago

The popularity of Rust has caused a lot of people to start taking safety more seriously. Ada is the safety language for everything except memory and thread safety (they're pretty safe still, but not completely like in Rust). I think some of it also comes from the number of new programming languages that have come out over the last few years. It's common for people to point at Ada as a reference for how to address problems that come up in C-like languages since Ada already solved so many problems in the 80's.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago

People have gotten fed up with smug rustaceans shouting about 40 year old technology.

unshavedyak 2y ago
If only that 40 year old technology could have captured attention in the last 40 years.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  I don't think an Adacian missionary has ever knocked on my door. Rustafarians were twice a week at some point.
  - sophacles 2y ago
    Maybe the rust folks realized that 40 more years and billions of dollars wasted on "we'll get pointers right this time and not leave the same old gaping holes in our new software" left people receptive to new things? They probably have another good reason to advocate too - 90% of anti-rust sentiment is "Gross, people like using it so much they tell others that they like it".
    - spoiler 2y ago
      IMO The language has merits regardless of a few (if not very few) bad apples in the community, and its technical merits should be the primary lense for evaluating it as a choice.
    - throwaway314155 2y ago
      > 90% of anti-rust sentiment is "Gross, people like using it so much they tell others that they like it". More like "Gross, people like using it so much they imply (or just outright say) other languages are inferior." edit: apparently I'm "posting too fast", so I'll reply in an edit. What you (sophocles) said is effectively equivalent to "other languages are inferior", although I appreciate how you twisted the words up like that. Computers can be used effectively in a wide variety of languages. Do some languages age poorly? Sure. But not all of them.

dismalaf 2y ago

I think Rust opened up a ton of interest in languages that are as fast as C++ but safer... The fact that Ada was doing a lot of stuff that Rust is trying to do now but decades earlier is particularly interesting.

throwaway81523 2y ago

I would say Ada got a lot nicer when Ada 2012 was released, and interest picked up since then. Around the same time, C++ got a lot nicer with the release of C++11.

m463 2y ago

Self driving cars?