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My understanding is that most of Adas users are maintaining legacy systems. It'd be great to hear from anyone who is using it today by choice.

metalliqaz 8mo ago
The Ada stronghold is aerospace and defense systems. So these may or may not be legacy systems, but they are safety-critical or mission-critical systems that rely on long standing well defined development processes. That inflexibility means that advancements in the technology are very slow to creep into usage. That goes not only for the languages/compilers but also the silicon and everything in between.
- krior 8mo ago
  The same can be said for Cobol and its relarionship with banking, but you will struggle to find anyone not categorizing cobol as legacy.
  - metalliqaz 8mo ago
    I'm not in banking so I don't know if banks write new business logic with Cobol or merely maintain existing systems. I would be very surprised, though, if modern web-based products are using Cobol, or fancy high-speed trading platforms, or big data-driven machine learning, etc.
    - pjmlp 8mo ago
      Be surprised, https://www.rocketsoftware.com/en-us/products/cobol/visual-cobol https://www.rocketsoftware.com/en-us/products/cobol/visual-c... https://cobolcloud.io/ https://cobolcloud.io/ https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx-code-assistant-z https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx-code-assistant-z
  - jibal 8mo ago
    That's quite the non sequitur. The relationship you mention isn't why COBOL is legacy.
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    Depends on which COBOL they are using. https://www.rocketsoftware.com/en-us/products/cobol/visual-cobol https://www.rocketsoftware.com/en-us/products/cobol/visual-c... Latest standard is from 2023. Nowadays everyone is moving into natural language programming, writing even longer prompts than COBOL applications.
Linux-Fan 8mo ago
After some search for programming languages which promise to reduce the number of bugs, I decided to give Ada (2012) a try. I like it better than C and C++ and the compiler is included in Debian in a reasonably recent version that it can compile the code that I need. Ada is particularly nice for programming RPI 2040 microcontrollers because for my needs I didn't need additional libraries. For both of my RPI 2040 projects (one of which is online here: https://masysma.net/37/dcf77_vfd_raspi_clock.xhtml https://masysma.net/37/dcf77_vfd_raspi_clock.xhtml), my code had fewer bugs than I had anticipated. For general purpose systems programming the lack of free software libraries is still a concern e.g. while working on a custom backup restore program I had to write my own LZ4 extractor and Blake3 hash function implementation because there wasn't any existing libraries that I could find for the purpose.
- kqr 8mo ago
  In my experience it is trivial to call out to C libraries from Ada. You run a tool to convert the header file to Ada syntax, you link in the C library, and then you call the C code as if it were Ada code. That's probably why you don't find LZ4 and Blake3 libraries. You forgot to look for the C libraries, which many Ada users would use.
jmccaf 8mo ago
My workplace uses Ada SPARK for high-integrity automotive software, ported from C or C++. IIUC, the contracts and static proofs can replace some activities like isolated unit tests for C++ . https://www.wevolver.com/article/nvidia-adoption-of-spark-ushers-in-a-new-era-in-security-critical-software-development https://www.wevolver.com/article/nvidia-adoption-of-spark-us...
ajxs 8mo ago
I use Ada for a lot of projects where C would otherwise be the default language of choice. I find that I spend much less time getting tied up debugging silly errors. In a lot of cases, Ada makes it difficult to do things the wrong way. When I move from working in C to Ada, there isn't much I miss, but when I move the other way around, I feel like I'm missing so much!
gte525u 8mo ago
We used it for a new Defense/Aerospace projects. Language-wise it's fine although verbose. Intent was to separate similar IP so there was no claim of cross contamination. Built-in threading and a robust standard library is nice. Tool-wise - refactoring was a bit of a pain.
- ajxs 8mo ago
  > Tool-wise - refactoring was a bit of a pain. Could you share what tools you were using, and what you felt was missing? I write Ada in vscode, because it's what I use in my dayjob. AdaCore's plugin has good language support^1, but I don't use it for much other than formatting, or expect sophisticated automated refactoring functionality from it. ^1: It's still missing support for some Ada202x features. I can't wait for it to support `return when...`.
docandrew 8mo ago
I use it for many of my side projects. I just like the language, the strong typing fits well with my work.
RavSS 8mo ago
I've used it in my personal hobby projects for several years now, Ada/SPARK is a favourite language of mine. It's not a legacy language and it has features which I wish mainstream languages would have, particularly regarding the formal verification utilities of SPARK. It's also great for bare metal development. I've not managed to convince anyone else to use it, as most are discouraged by either its Pascal-style "verbose" syntax on first glance or its general lack of third-party libraries (relative to something like Rust's ecosystem). Anyone who can get past those aspects should really give it a try.
- adrian_b 8mo ago
  The abstract syntax of Ada is in many cases superior to that of the C-derived languages, but I also dislike its verbosity. At least for personal projects, the verbosity can easily be avoided by using a preprocessor for the Ada source files. This is what I do. Unfortunately, this would seldom be considered acceptable in a business context, because the non-standard appearance of the language would be considered an obstacle for developers unfamiliar with it, so it would complicate the future maintenance of a project. It would have been nice if one of the revisions of the Ada language would have provided a standard set of abbreviations, e.g. for using various kinds of Unicode bracket symbols instead of the keywords currently used for this purpose. There would have been nothing unusual in this. In the past many programming languages have defined alternative representations for the tokens, both a verbose representation and an abbreviated representation that may use more symbols, for instance PL/I and ALGOL 68.
pjmlp 8mo ago
There is enough business to keep 7 compiler vendors in business, those customers that actually pay for compilers. I can provide the list, in case you don't find it from previous comments. Also NVidia rather use Ada/SPARK instead of Rust for their automotive systems.

metalliqaz 8mo ago

The Ada stronghold is aerospace and defense systems. So these may or may not be legacy systems, but they are safety-critical or mission-critical systems that rely on long standing well defined development processes. That inflexibility means that advancements in the technology are very slow to creep into usage. That goes not only for the languages/compilers but also the silicon and everything in between.

krior 8mo ago
The same can be said for Cobol and its relarionship with banking, but you will struggle to find anyone not categorizing cobol as legacy.
- metalliqaz 8mo ago
  I'm not in banking so I don't know if banks write new business logic with Cobol or merely maintain existing systems. I would be very surprised, though, if modern web-based products are using Cobol, or fancy high-speed trading platforms, or big data-driven machine learning, etc.
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    Be surprised, https://www.rocketsoftware.com/en-us/products/cobol/visual-cobol https://www.rocketsoftware.com/en-us/products/cobol/visual-c... https://cobolcloud.io/ https://cobolcloud.io/ https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx-code-assistant-z https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx-code-assistant-z
- jibal 8mo ago
  That's quite the non sequitur. The relationship you mention isn't why COBOL is legacy.
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  Depends on which COBOL they are using. https://www.rocketsoftware.com/en-us/products/cobol/visual-cobol https://www.rocketsoftware.com/en-us/products/cobol/visual-c... Latest standard is from 2023. Nowadays everyone is moving into natural language programming, writing even longer prompts than COBOL applications.

Linux-Fan 8mo ago

After some search for programming languages which promise to reduce the number of bugs, I decided to give Ada (2012) a try. I like it better than C and C++ and the compiler is included in Debian in a reasonably recent version that it can compile the code that I need. Ada is particularly nice for programming RPI 2040 microcontrollers because for my needs I didn't need additional libraries. For both of my RPI 2040 projects (one of which is online here: https://masysma.net/37/dcf77_vfd_raspi_clock.xhtml https://masysma.net/37/dcf77_vfd_raspi_clock.xhtml), my code had fewer bugs than I had anticipated. For general purpose systems programming the lack of free software libraries is still a concern e.g. while working on a custom backup restore program I had to write my own LZ4 extractor and Blake3 hash function implementation because there wasn't any existing libraries that I could find for the purpose.

kqr 8mo ago
In my experience it is trivial to call out to C libraries from Ada. You run a tool to convert the header file to Ada syntax, you link in the C library, and then you call the C code as if it were Ada code. That's probably why you don't find LZ4 and Blake3 libraries. You forgot to look for the C libraries, which many Ada users would use.

jmccaf 8mo ago

My workplace uses Ada SPARK for high-integrity automotive software, ported from C or C++. IIUC, the contracts and static proofs can replace some activities like isolated unit tests for C++ . https://www.wevolver.com/article/nvidia-adoption-of-spark-ushers-in-a-new-era-in-security-critical-software-development https://www.wevolver.com/article/nvidia-adoption-of-spark-us...

ajxs 8mo ago

I use Ada for a lot of projects where C would otherwise be the default language of choice. I find that I spend much less time getting tied up debugging silly errors. In a lot of cases, Ada makes it difficult to do things the wrong way. When I move from working in C to Ada, there isn't much I miss, but when I move the other way around, I feel like I'm missing so much!

gte525u 8mo ago

We used it for a new Defense/Aerospace projects. Language-wise it's fine although verbose. Intent was to separate similar IP so there was no claim of cross contamination. Built-in threading and a robust standard library is nice. Tool-wise - refactoring was a bit of a pain.

ajxs 8mo ago
> Tool-wise - refactoring was a bit of a pain. Could you share what tools you were using, and what you felt was missing? I write Ada in vscode, because it's what I use in my dayjob. AdaCore's plugin has good language support^1, but I don't use it for much other than formatting, or expect sophisticated automated refactoring functionality from it. ^1: It's still missing support for some Ada202x features. I can't wait for it to support `return when...`.

docandrew 8mo ago

I use it for many of my side projects. I just like the language, the strong typing fits well with my work.

RavSS 8mo ago

I've used it in my personal hobby projects for several years now, Ada/SPARK is a favourite language of mine. It's not a legacy language and it has features which I wish mainstream languages would have, particularly regarding the formal verification utilities of SPARK. It's also great for bare metal development. I've not managed to convince anyone else to use it, as most are discouraged by either its Pascal-style "verbose" syntax on first glance or its general lack of third-party libraries (relative to something like Rust's ecosystem). Anyone who can get past those aspects should really give it a try.

adrian_b 8mo ago
The abstract syntax of Ada is in many cases superior to that of the C-derived languages, but I also dislike its verbosity. At least for personal projects, the verbosity can easily be avoided by using a preprocessor for the Ada source files. This is what I do. Unfortunately, this would seldom be considered acceptable in a business context, because the non-standard appearance of the language would be considered an obstacle for developers unfamiliar with it, so it would complicate the future maintenance of a project. It would have been nice if one of the revisions of the Ada language would have provided a standard set of abbreviations, e.g. for using various kinds of Unicode bracket symbols instead of the keywords currently used for this purpose. There would have been nothing unusual in this. In the past many programming languages have defined alternative representations for the tokens, both a verbose representation and an abbreviated representation that may use more symbols, for instance PL/I and ALGOL 68.

pjmlp 8mo ago

There is enough business to keep 7 compiler vendors in business, those customers that actually pay for compilers. I can provide the list, in case you don't find it from previous comments. Also NVidia rather use Ada/SPARK instead of Rust for their automotive systems.