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Ada’s failure to escape its niche is overdetermined. Given the sophistication of the language and the compiler technology of the day, there was no way Ada was

Ada’s failure to escape its niche is overdetermined. Given the sophistication of the language and the compiler technology of the day, there was no way Ada was going to run well on 1980’s microcomputers. Intel built the i432 “mainframe on a chip” with a bunch of Ada concepts baked into the hardware for performance, and it was still as slow as a dog. And as we now know, microcomputers later ate the world, carrying along their C and assembly legacy for the better part of two decades, until they got fast enough and compiler technology got good enough that richer languages were plausible.

michaelcampbell 6mo ago
I used it a bit a Uni and remember enjoying it, but can you say what was slow about it; compilation or runtime or all of it?
- twoodfin 6mo ago
  I’ve never directly played with Ada but my understanding is that it was very much both. Ada includes a number of critical abstractions that require either dynamic runtime code (slow runtime) or the proverbial sufficiently smart compiler (slow compile-time). These were for good reasons, like safety and the need to define concurrent systems within the language. But they were too heavyweight for the commodity hardware of the era. Nowadays, languages like Go, C++, Java, Rust, … have no trouble with similar abstractions because optimizers have gotten really good (particularly with inlining) and the hardware has cycles to spare.
  - sidewndr46 6mo ago
    I had to take some course that was something like "Programming Language Theory". As a result I had to look at the specifications for dozens of different programming languages. I remember looking at the features of some languages and scratching my head trying to figure out how some of this would ever be practically implemented by a compiler. Later on I found out lots of stuff is just implemented by a runtime anyways, which lead to me realize that those fancy language features are often better as a library.
    - cubix 6mo ago
      I took a course exactly like that. I wonder if we went to the same school, or it’s due to curriculum standardization. The professor was particularly enthusiastic about Ada, so I had assumed the course was largely his creation.
      - sidewndr46 6mo ago
        the accreditation was through ABET at the time from what I recall
      - budman1 6mo ago
        academics loved ada when it came out. it was a very sophisticated language for it's day. same is true today. the spec/body separation made for an actual delineation between design and implementation.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- budman1 6mo ago
  compilation. run time was good, and you could turn off things like run time range checking, if you wanted to.
shrubble 6mo ago
The first validated compiler for Ada that ran on the IBM PC was released in 1983. The third validated compiler ran on the Western Digital “Pascal MicroEngine” running the UCSD p-system with 64K memory. The MicroEngine executed the byte code from the p-system natively, which was an interesting approach. I think more research is warranted by you on this subject.
- twoodfin 6mo ago
  I’m not saying it wasn’t possible, I’m saying the larger ecosystem was never going to embrace a language that was as heavyweight as Ada. In 1983, most PC system software was written in assembly!
- tkurtbond 6mo ago
  Janus Ada 1.5 ran on CP/M.
sehugg 6mo ago
I sometimes wonder what "Turbo Ada" would have looked like, but I think it would have probably looked like later versions of Borland Pascal. Things like generics and exceptions would have taken some of the "turbo" out of the compiler and runtime -- the code generator didn't even get a non-peephole optimizer until 32-bit Delphi, it would have been too slow. It might be nice to have Ada's tasks driven by DOS interrupts, though. I think GNAT did this.
- jll29 6mo ago
  I have not seen it, but there is something close to what you ask about: Turbo Modula-2 (an implementation of MODULA-2 written by Martin Odersky), as both MODULA-2 and PASCAL were Niklaus Wirth-invented languages that looks very similar to Ada: "Shortly before we finished our compiler, Borland came out with Turbo Pascal, and they were considering going into the Modula-2 market as well. In fact, Borland decided to buy our Modula-2 compiler to be sold under the name of Turbo Modula-2 for CP/M alongside an IBM PC version they wanted to develop. We offered to do the IBM PC version for them, but they told us they had it already covered. Unfortunately that version took them much longer than planned. By the time it came out, three or four years later, their implementor team had split from the company, and it became known as TopSpeed Modula-2. In the absence of an IBM-PC version, Borland never put any marketing muscle behind Turbo-Modula-2, so it remained rather obscure." -- https://www.artima.com/articles/the-origins-of-scala https://www.artima.com/articles/the-origins-of-scala
  - ako 6mo ago
    I think Oracle PlSQL was also based on Ada, basically Ada + SQL embedded. So it may be the widest used version of "Ada".
    - twoodfin 6mo ago
      Wow, that’s a factoid I’d love to learn more about!
      - ako 6mo ago
pjmlp 6mo ago
Sun was the first UNIX vendor to introduce the idea to split UNIX into user and developer SKUs, now Sun eventually also had an Ada compiler. When the companies bought the Solaris Developer tools, that did not include the Ada compiler, that was extra, and wasn't cheap. Having already paid for C, C++, Assembly, why would anyone pay extra for Ada if not obliged to do so?

michaelcampbell 6mo ago

I used it a bit a Uni and remember enjoying it, but can you say what was slow about it; compilation or runtime or all of it?

twoodfin 6mo ago
I’ve never directly played with Ada but my understanding is that it was very much both. Ada includes a number of critical abstractions that require either dynamic runtime code (slow runtime) or the proverbial sufficiently smart compiler (slow compile-time). These were for good reasons, like safety and the need to define concurrent systems within the language. But they were too heavyweight for the commodity hardware of the era. Nowadays, languages like Go, C++, Java, Rust, … have no trouble with similar abstractions because optimizers have gotten really good (particularly with inlining) and the hardware has cycles to spare.
- sidewndr46 6mo ago
  I had to take some course that was something like "Programming Language Theory". As a result I had to look at the specifications for dozens of different programming languages. I remember looking at the features of some languages and scratching my head trying to figure out how some of this would ever be practically implemented by a compiler. Later on I found out lots of stuff is just implemented by a runtime anyways, which lead to me realize that those fancy language features are often better as a library.
  - cubix 6mo ago
    I took a course exactly like that. I wonder if we went to the same school, or it’s due to curriculum standardization. The professor was particularly enthusiastic about Ada, so I had assumed the course was largely his creation.
    - sidewndr46 6mo ago
      the accreditation was through ABET at the time from what I recall
    - budman1 6mo ago
      academics loved ada when it came out. it was a very sophisticated language for it's day. same is true today. the spec/body separation made for an actual delineation between design and implementation.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
budman1 6mo ago
compilation. run time was good, and you could turn off things like run time range checking, if you wanted to.

shrubble 6mo ago

The first validated compiler for Ada that ran on the IBM PC was released in 1983. The third validated compiler ran on the Western Digital “Pascal MicroEngine” running the UCSD p-system with 64K memory. The MicroEngine executed the byte code from the p-system natively, which was an interesting approach. I think more research is warranted by you on this subject.

twoodfin 6mo ago
I’m not saying it wasn’t possible, I’m saying the larger ecosystem was never going to embrace a language that was as heavyweight as Ada. In 1983, most PC system software was written in assembly!
tkurtbond 6mo ago
Janus Ada 1.5 ran on CP/M.

sehugg 6mo ago

I sometimes wonder what "Turbo Ada" would have looked like, but I think it would have probably looked like later versions of Borland Pascal. Things like generics and exceptions would have taken some of the "turbo" out of the compiler and runtime -- the code generator didn't even get a non-peephole optimizer until 32-bit Delphi, it would have been too slow. It might be nice to have Ada's tasks driven by DOS interrupts, though. I think GNAT did this.

jll29 6mo ago
I have not seen it, but there is something close to what you ask about: Turbo Modula-2 (an implementation of MODULA-2 written by Martin Odersky), as both MODULA-2 and PASCAL were Niklaus Wirth-invented languages that looks very similar to Ada: "Shortly before we finished our compiler, Borland came out with Turbo Pascal, and they were considering going into the Modula-2 market as well. In fact, Borland decided to buy our Modula-2 compiler to be sold under the name of Turbo Modula-2 for CP/M alongside an IBM PC version they wanted to develop. We offered to do the IBM PC version for them, but they told us they had it already covered. Unfortunately that version took them much longer than planned. By the time it came out, three or four years later, their implementor team had split from the company, and it became known as TopSpeed Modula-2. In the absence of an IBM-PC version, Borland never put any marketing muscle behind Turbo-Modula-2, so it remained rather obscure." -- https://www.artima.com/articles/the-origins-of-scala https://www.artima.com/articles/the-origins-of-scala
- ako 6mo ago
  I think Oracle PlSQL was also based on Ada, basically Ada + SQL embedded. So it may be the widest used version of "Ada".
  - twoodfin 6mo ago
    Wow, that’s a factoid I’d love to learn more about!
    - ako 6mo ago

pjmlp 6mo ago

Sun was the first UNIX vendor to introduce the idea to split UNIX into user and developer SKUs, now Sun eventually also had an Ada compiler. When the companies bought the Solaris Developer tools, that did not include the Ada compiler, that was extra, and wasn't cheap. Having already paid for C, C++, Assembly, why would anyone pay extra for Ada if not obliged to do so?