10 ms·

Who's Using Ada? Real-World Projects Powered by the Ada Programming Language

115 points by dodders 12y ago

reledi 12y ago
I would have enjoyed seeing a list like this in university where we had the option to learn Ada for a software engineering course. Ada was mandated to be used for military applications but became largely irrelevant for commercial applications. It's now considered a white elephant [1] by many. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant
- krylon 12y ago
  To my knowledge, Ada is used in embedded/realtime systems where reliablity is of the utmost importance. The European Ariane rockets have code written in Ada on board, I think (these are civilian rockets, not military). There is a subset of Ada called Spark that allows - to a degree - automated verification of code. Not saying I like it or anything like that, but it definitely has its place.
  - reledi 12y ago
    For sure. This "Who's Using Ada?" list that was posted gives a good overview for what kind of applications it's used for. You'll see many where lives are on the line (be it for good or bad).
arthursilva 12y ago
Ada is a language that deserves more love.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  Beside being intimidating and having few syntax curiosity (' as string index operator) it really is a nice language.
  - _kst_ 12y ago
    Hmm? Ada uses the apostrophe for character literals and to introduce attributes. Strings are arrays; indexing uses the same `array[index]` syntax as any other array. S: constant String := "Hello"; H: constant Character := S(1);
    - agumonkey 12y ago
      True, I was thinking about type conversion from String to Character, IIRC you have to use ' operator, something like my_string'first (not sure, I needed it 10 years ago), otherwise my_string(1) gives a String of length one, not the first Character.
      - attackcrow 12y ago
        Depends on how the array is defined. Ada allows you to have any discrete type as your array indices, so to get the first element of an array, you need to use my_string(my_string'first).
- marxama 12y ago
  I got to use it a bit in a Real-Time Systems course I took recently. I wasn't too excited about it starting out, it didn't initially feel like much more than a different C. As I've been spending some time with Clojure's core.async, I was really pleasantly surprised when I came to realize that it offered a really nice CSP implementation! Didn't go much further than that, but seems like a nice language that I wouldn't mind using more.
callmeed 12y ago
Ada was my first language in college. At JC, our professors were DoD contractors at the nearby Air Force Base. Good times.
circlefavshape 12y ago
I used Ada on my first coding job - test scripts for Airbus engines back in the mid-90s. Nice to see they're still using Ada, though tbh I don't remember a single thing about the language except for you can't dynamically create objects
- baldgeek 12y ago
  Ada used to be basis for CS Curriculm at Cal Poly Pomona (Circa '92- '98). Ada teaches good practice. One prominent feature is that there is no implicit casting; Add a float and int, you get a compile error. It's good to know that you have to do exactly what you want and the compiler enforces this.
  - henderson101 12y ago
    ADA at university - never touched it again. It was ADA 83, and the ADA 95 object extensions looked horrible. I remember seeing PL/SQL circa Oracle 8i and it looking a lot like ADA.
    - JasonFruit 12y ago
      The object extensions aren't bad; they just suffer from a combination of an unusual object model and an even more unusual use of terminology.
    - jacques_chester 12y ago
      > I remember seeing PL/SQL circa Oracle 8i and it looking a lot like ADA. Not a coincidence. The designers of PL/SQL were largely inspired by Ada's basic syntax and structure. It's not an acronym, by the way, so no need to all-caps it.
  - gamegoblin 12y ago
    Haskell is similar in this sense. And Golang (IIRC, only coded a few hundred lines in it two years ago). Example from a Haskell REPL, where Haskell won't even upcast an Int (machine int) to an Integer (unbounded int, python style): Prelude> let a = 1 :: Int Prelude> let b = 2 :: Integer Prelude> a+b <interactive>:4:3: Couldn't match expected type `Int' with actual type `Integer' In the second argument of `(+)', namely `b' In the expression: a + b In an equation for `it': it = a + b
thejteam 12y ago
Although I've never coded in Ada I have had to read existing code to figure out what it was doing. Ada struck me as a language that would be a pain to write in(at least it would take a long time) but it was a pleasure to read. Even without an intimate knowledge of the language (I was a C++ guy) I was able to figure it out.
- nabla9 12y ago
  Alternative to Ada is often writing Ada in some other language more painfully :( I think it's sad that companies move to restricted C/C++ subset just because there are more people with C/C++ in their resume. 1. The JSF air vehicle C++ coding standards http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf 2. MISRA-C:2004 Guidelines for the use of the C language in critical systems http://caxapa.ru/thumbs/468328/misra-c-2004.pdf http://caxapa.ru/thumbs/468328/misra-c-2004.pdf 3. MISRA C++:2008 Guidelines for the use of the C++ language in critical systems http://frey.notk.org/books/MISRA-Cpp-2008.pdf http://frey.notk.org/books/MISRA-Cpp-2008.pdf
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    I have been visiting FOSDEM every few years and Ada presence in Europe has been slowly rising. Just check the archives. Most likely because for writing fail safe software, it is better to use a language with built in support for safety, than using crutches.
    - tormeh 12y ago
      That's really encouraging! The C++/Java/Python monoculture coming out of schools suck.
  - danieltillett 12y ago
    Thanks for the links - I have been wanting to read the mistake guidelines for sometime.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Why cant they just learn ADA?
imgabe 12y ago
Wow, I went to GW and learned Ada in CS051. I didn't have much of a point of reference at the time to compare it to other languages, but it was pretty easy to learn and I enjoyed the class.
- ahi 12y ago
  I am class of 05 so my intro class was the last one to use ada. I also remember it being very easy on beginners. At the time I was annoyed the underclassmen got java, but now that I know java, no thank you.
sushdb 12y ago
Ada was used on some of the modules on India's Mars mission: http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1ujcmo/we_are_three_isro_scientists_here_to_answer_your/ http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1ujcmo/we_are_three_i...
kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
The attribute mechanism is something a lot of languages would benefit from. Need to know the maximum value of an integer? Just ask the integer type to tell you. No going to a library to look up inscrutable constants.
- cjensen 12y ago
  C++: numeric_limits<type>::max ()
  - kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
    Ada attribute provide a lot more meta information about types and objects than just integer limits. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Attributes http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Attributes Some of these would be methods in modern OO languages but many are unique to Ada.
    - cjensen 12y ago
      So does C++; both C++ and Ada have traits the other doesn't. Good ideas go around.
- jmnicolas 12y ago
  In C# you have Int32.MaxValue. I always assumed it was pretty standard everywhere. Btw, Ada is on my list of languages to learn since 2011. I guess I will put it first on the 2015 good resolutions list :-)
  - claystu 12y ago
    When you get started, here are the two books that seem to get recommended the most frequently: Ada as A Second Language: http://amzn.com/0070116075 http://amzn.com/0070116075 Programming in Ada 2005: http://amzn.com/0321340787 http://amzn.com/0321340787
    - 12y ago
Igglyboo 12y ago
Ada is still extremely popular in mission critical software. I know the US military and NASA use it a lot.
foogered 12y ago
I used Ada during my first internship (avionics software). However, the group I was part of was in the middle of phasing out Ada in favor of C/C++. This was around 2010-2012.
- anderspitman 12y ago
  Similar for me. My first ever programming assignment for a real company was converting an Ada project to C for the Boeing 787.
  - claystu 12y ago
    How was your feeling about the C codebase compared to Ada? Did one feel more comprehensible or reliable than the other?
bglazer 12y ago
This is certainly an impressive list of projects. Ada seems to be favored for critical software that can't ever fail. I've been considering how to achieve this type of software reliability for more "enterprisey" applications. Formally verifiable languages are certainly intriguing, but would be a hard sell for the managers at the Fortune 100 company where I work. Reading the wikipedia page for Ada didn't really give much insight into why the language is so heavily favored for applications like avionics software. Built in task based concurrency is certainly nice, but not a game-changer. Can someone more familiar with Ada explain what makes it so popular for high reliability applications? Or is it a question of culture and tooling rather than the language itself?
- acomjean 12y ago
  It has a lot of safety checks built into the runtime, which make it a little slower. x is and int between 1 and 200. x gets asigned out of that range, exception is thrown. So we weren't manually checking everything. Also I think it was mandated as a language for US government contracts, for a variety of reasons.
  - RogerL 12y ago
    As with asserts in C, you can compile with that turned on or off.
- tormeh 12y ago
  Like C, it's been around forever and is considered battle-proven and figured-out. Unlike C it has real-time features and a type system that isn't trying to kill you. Also the syntax is designed to be as easy to understand as possible, typing out every word and using no three-letter abbreviations. It's in general a language that was way ahead of its time, but survived because the DoD mandated it. Its main competitor is C, but that's mostly because the amount of engineers who know Ada out of school is really low, which is a shame, I think. Rust is way too new and Haskell has GC.
- HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
  Or is it a question of culture and tooling rather than the language itself? Pretty much. I write software for Medical Devices and culture and process is what it boils down to. Tooling helps. We use C, C++, C# among other languages. Language makes a little difference in reliability, but not much. What matters in a nutshell: Know what you're building: need good Requirements Analyze those Requirements for correctness, clarity and uniqueness (no conflicts) Make sure your design meets all the Requirements and doesn't add anything: if you add a feature not in a Requirement, how will the testers know it's there? Verify the design: i.e., does it do what you need and does it do it "well." Does it barely function, or will it handle what you expect to be thrown at it or fail gracefully? Separate the concerns: e.g., need to be sure that the temperature is correct? The temperature control code and the temperature verification code should be decoupled from each other. Code: probably where language makes the most difference, although different languages will influence your design. Verify all design artifacts: review your Requirements, Designs, and all Code against predetermined quality standards. Reject anything that doesn't meet the standard. Build what you planned to build, and document what you built. Most errors will stem from Requirements problems. That's Software Quality in a tiny nutshell ;-)
acomjean 12y ago
A lot of radar systems run on Ada. Its takes a little getting used to, but its a good language. Ada has a c binding package so it can call down to the OS libraries (networking, shared memory), which is great, but kills some of the niceness of living in an ada world. When I was trying out GO, I got a little ada flashback for some reason. The package system was good. I disliked ada strings though. When I left the industry, they were looking for alernative languages for new projects. GCC Ada compiler was being considered for maintaining older projects, seemed decent. http://libre.adacore.com/tools/gnat-gpl-edition/ http://libre.adacore.com/tools/gnat-gpl-edition/
- zild3d 12y ago
  Yep, the Aegis Combat System is almost all in Ada (but simulated and developed mostly in C++ and Matlab) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System
zerr 12y ago
I'd love to hear about remote Ada jobs, and not requiring US citizenship...
- bitwize 12y ago
  Europe loves it some Ada in the avionics space.
  - zerr 12y ago
    Yes, but in those types of organizations remote jobs aren't really encouraged.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
      Though it would be cool if you could SSH into an A320 flight management computer from your apartment :-)
      - zerr 12y ago
        Or they could borrow me one for some time... :)
dugmartin 12y ago
We used Ada in my software engineering class in 1992 to try to build a system to do route finding on a map and then generate directions. Each build took 40 to 50 minutes on a pretty nice PC at the time. I don't miss those days.
- tormeh 12y ago
  Wrong tool for the job. I would do that in Python.
  - iak8god 12y ago
    Not in 1992 you wouldn't. This is a strange thing to say without explaining anyway. Would you care to expand on your point? I would expect Ada to run orders of magnitude faster than Python for a task like this.
    - tormeh 12y ago
      I think that when you are doing exploratory programming and you're not quite sure about what you're doing you should have a language that gets out of the way as much as possible, which Python does. Ada and other bondage languages are for when correctness is most important or you need structure because you know the codebase will become large.
      - iak8god 12y ago
        > I think that when you are doing exploratory programming and you're not quite sure about what you're doing you should have a language that gets out of the way as much as possible, which Python does. I agree with this, but am not sure it's on point. Every software engineering class I've heard of is about as far as you can get from exploratory programming.
okatsu 12y ago
As a college student, is Ada still worth learning for (Canadian) development jobs in critical systems? I'd like to think it would give me an edge coming out of school, but I keep reading that new applications are being written in C/C++. Edit: In fact, I interned at an avionics company and they're slowly trying to entirely switch to model-based development, using certified software that generates the code for you.
meej 12y ago
Nice list. I programmed in Ada for eight months in 1997 when I was on a co-op at Rockwell Collins, working on their simulation testbed for their general aviation flight management systems -- I recognize several of the planes listed in the Commercial Aviation section. I ended up really enjoying programming in Ada and was unhappy about having to return to C++ when I went back to school that fall. It was a bit more work to write, but it was easy to read and when it compiled it usually did what you expected it to. It's a language that makes it difficult for you to shoot yourself in the foot.
mtimjones 12y ago
I worked on two geosynchronous communication satellites built on Ada (late 1980s using the TLD compiler). Both had a maximum of 48KB of ROM and 16KB of RAM. That included attitude control, command, telemetry, thermal/power management, fault manager, and little OS. Since then, I've done pretty much nothing but C, but I do miss Ada's features from time to time.

115 points by dodders 12y ago

I would have enjoyed seeing a list like this in university where we had the option to learn Ada for a software engineering course. Ada was mandated to be used for military applications but became largely irrelevant for commercial applications. It's now considered a white elephant [1] by many. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant

krylon 12y ago
To my knowledge, Ada is used in embedded/realtime systems where reliablity is of the utmost importance. The European Ariane rockets have code written in Ada on board, I think (these are civilian rockets, not military). There is a subset of Ada called Spark that allows - to a degree - automated verification of code. Not saying I like it or anything like that, but it definitely has its place.
- reledi 12y ago
  For sure. This "Who's Using Ada?" list that was posted gives a good overview for what kind of applications it's used for. You'll see many where lives are on the line (be it for good or bad).

arthursilva 12y ago

Ada is a language that deserves more love.

agumonkey 12y ago
Beside being intimidating and having few syntax curiosity (' as string index operator) it really is a nice language.
- _kst_ 12y ago
  Hmm? Ada uses the apostrophe for character literals and to introduce attributes. Strings are arrays; indexing uses the same `array[index]` syntax as any other array. S: constant String := "Hello"; H: constant Character := S(1);
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    True, I was thinking about type conversion from String to Character, IIRC you have to use ' operator, something like my_string'first (not sure, I needed it 10 years ago), otherwise my_string(1) gives a String of length one, not the first Character.
    - attackcrow 12y ago
      Depends on how the array is defined. Ada allows you to have any discrete type as your array indices, so to get the first element of an array, you need to use my_string(my_string'first).
marxama 12y ago
I got to use it a bit in a Real-Time Systems course I took recently. I wasn't too excited about it starting out, it didn't initially feel like much more than a different C. As I've been spending some time with Clojure's core.async, I was really pleasantly surprised when I came to realize that it offered a really nice CSP implementation! Didn't go much further than that, but seems like a nice language that I wouldn't mind using more.

callmeed 12y ago

Ada was my first language in college. At JC, our professors were DoD contractors at the nearby Air Force Base. Good times.

circlefavshape 12y ago

I used Ada on my first coding job - test scripts for Airbus engines back in the mid-90s. Nice to see they're still using Ada, though tbh I don't remember a single thing about the language except for you can't dynamically create objects

baldgeek 12y ago
Ada used to be basis for CS Curriculm at Cal Poly Pomona (Circa '92- '98). Ada teaches good practice. One prominent feature is that there is no implicit casting; Add a float and int, you get a compile error. It's good to know that you have to do exactly what you want and the compiler enforces this.
- henderson101 12y ago
  ADA at university - never touched it again. It was ADA 83, and the ADA 95 object extensions looked horrible. I remember seeing PL/SQL circa Oracle 8i and it looking a lot like ADA.
  - JasonFruit 12y ago
    The object extensions aren't bad; they just suffer from a combination of an unusual object model and an even more unusual use of terminology.
  - jacques_chester 12y ago
    > I remember seeing PL/SQL circa Oracle 8i and it looking a lot like ADA. Not a coincidence. The designers of PL/SQL were largely inspired by Ada's basic syntax and structure. It's not an acronym, by the way, so no need to all-caps it.
- gamegoblin 12y ago
  Haskell is similar in this sense. And Golang (IIRC, only coded a few hundred lines in it two years ago). Example from a Haskell REPL, where Haskell won't even upcast an Int (machine int) to an Integer (unbounded int, python style): Prelude> let a = 1 :: Int Prelude> let b = 2 :: Integer Prelude> a+b <interactive>:4:3: Couldn't match expected type `Int' with actual type `Integer' In the second argument of `(+)', namely `b' In the expression: a + b In an equation for `it': it = a + b

thejteam 12y ago

Although I've never coded in Ada I have had to read existing code to figure out what it was doing. Ada struck me as a language that would be a pain to write in(at least it would take a long time) but it was a pleasure to read. Even without an intimate knowledge of the language (I was a C++ guy) I was able to figure it out.

nabla9 12y ago
Alternative to Ada is often writing Ada in some other language more painfully :( I think it's sad that companies move to restricted C/C++ subset just because there are more people with C/C++ in their resume. 1. The JSF air vehicle C++ coding standards http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf 2. MISRA-C:2004 Guidelines for the use of the C language in critical systems http://caxapa.ru/thumbs/468328/misra-c-2004.pdf http://caxapa.ru/thumbs/468328/misra-c-2004.pdf 3. MISRA C++:2008 Guidelines for the use of the C++ language in critical systems http://frey.notk.org/books/MISRA-Cpp-2008.pdf http://frey.notk.org/books/MISRA-Cpp-2008.pdf
- pjmlp 12y ago
  I have been visiting FOSDEM every few years and Ada presence in Europe has been slowly rising. Just check the archives. Most likely because for writing fail safe software, it is better to use a language with built in support for safety, than using crutches.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    That's really encouraging! The C++/Java/Python monoculture coming out of schools suck.
- danieltillett 12y ago
  Thanks for the links - I have been wanting to read the mistake guidelines for sometime.
- walshemj 12y ago
  Why cant they just learn ADA?

imgabe 12y ago

Wow, I went to GW and learned Ada in CS051. I didn't have much of a point of reference at the time to compare it to other languages, but it was pretty easy to learn and I enjoyed the class.

ahi 12y ago
I am class of 05 so my intro class was the last one to use ada. I also remember it being very easy on beginners. At the time I was annoyed the underclassmen got java, but now that I know java, no thank you.

sushdb 12y ago

Ada was used on some of the modules on India's Mars mission: http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1ujcmo/we_are_three_isro_scientists_here_to_answer_your/ http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1ujcmo/we_are_three_i...

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago

The attribute mechanism is something a lot of languages would benefit from. Need to know the maximum value of an integer? Just ask the integer type to tell you. No going to a library to look up inscrutable constants.

cjensen 12y ago
C++: numeric_limits<type>::max ()
- kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
  Ada attribute provide a lot more meta information about types and objects than just integer limits. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Attributes http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Attributes Some of these would be methods in modern OO languages but many are unique to Ada.
  - cjensen 12y ago
    So does C++; both C++ and Ada have traits the other doesn't. Good ideas go around.
jmnicolas 12y ago
In C# you have Int32.MaxValue. I always assumed it was pretty standard everywhere. Btw, Ada is on my list of languages to learn since 2011. I guess I will put it first on the 2015 good resolutions list :-)
- claystu 12y ago
  When you get started, here are the two books that seem to get recommended the most frequently: Ada as A Second Language: http://amzn.com/0070116075 http://amzn.com/0070116075 Programming in Ada 2005: http://amzn.com/0321340787 http://amzn.com/0321340787
  - 12y ago

Igglyboo 12y ago

Ada is still extremely popular in mission critical software. I know the US military and NASA use it a lot.

foogered 12y ago

I used Ada during my first internship (avionics software). However, the group I was part of was in the middle of phasing out Ada in favor of C/C++. This was around 2010-2012.

anderspitman 12y ago
Similar for me. My first ever programming assignment for a real company was converting an Ada project to C for the Boeing 787.
- claystu 12y ago
  How was your feeling about the C codebase compared to Ada? Did one feel more comprehensible or reliable than the other?

bglazer 12y ago

This is certainly an impressive list of projects. Ada seems to be favored for critical software that can't ever fail. I've been considering how to achieve this type of software reliability for more "enterprisey" applications. Formally verifiable languages are certainly intriguing, but would be a hard sell for the managers at the Fortune 100 company where I work. Reading the wikipedia page for Ada didn't really give much insight into why the language is so heavily favored for applications like avionics software. Built in task based concurrency is certainly nice, but not a game-changer. Can someone more familiar with Ada explain what makes it so popular for high reliability applications? Or is it a question of culture and tooling rather than the language itself?

acomjean 12y ago
It has a lot of safety checks built into the runtime, which make it a little slower. x is and int between 1 and 200. x gets asigned out of that range, exception is thrown. So we weren't manually checking everything. Also I think it was mandated as a language for US government contracts, for a variety of reasons.
- RogerL 12y ago
  As with asserts in C, you can compile with that turned on or off.
tormeh 12y ago
Like C, it's been around forever and is considered battle-proven and figured-out. Unlike C it has real-time features and a type system that isn't trying to kill you. Also the syntax is designed to be as easy to understand as possible, typing out every word and using no three-letter abbreviations. It's in general a language that was way ahead of its time, but survived because the DoD mandated it. Its main competitor is C, but that's mostly because the amount of engineers who know Ada out of school is really low, which is a shame, I think. Rust is way too new and Haskell has GC.
HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
Or is it a question of culture and tooling rather than the language itself? Pretty much. I write software for Medical Devices and culture and process is what it boils down to. Tooling helps. We use C, C++, C# among other languages. Language makes a little difference in reliability, but not much. What matters in a nutshell: Know what you're building: need good Requirements Analyze those Requirements for correctness, clarity and uniqueness (no conflicts) Make sure your design meets all the Requirements and doesn't add anything: if you add a feature not in a Requirement, how will the testers know it's there? Verify the design: i.e., does it do what you need and does it do it "well." Does it barely function, or will it handle what you expect to be thrown at it or fail gracefully? Separate the concerns: e.g., need to be sure that the temperature is correct? The temperature control code and the temperature verification code should be decoupled from each other. Code: probably where language makes the most difference, although different languages will influence your design. Verify all design artifacts: review your Requirements, Designs, and all Code against predetermined quality standards. Reject anything that doesn't meet the standard. Build what you planned to build, and document what you built. Most errors will stem from Requirements problems. That's Software Quality in a tiny nutshell ;-)

acomjean 12y ago

A lot of radar systems run on Ada. Its takes a little getting used to, but its a good language. Ada has a c binding package so it can call down to the OS libraries (networking, shared memory), which is great, but kills some of the niceness of living in an ada world. When I was trying out GO, I got a little ada flashback for some reason. The package system was good. I disliked ada strings though. When I left the industry, they were looking for alernative languages for new projects. GCC Ada compiler was being considered for maintaining older projects, seemed decent. http://libre.adacore.com/tools/gnat-gpl-edition/ http://libre.adacore.com/tools/gnat-gpl-edition/

zild3d 12y ago
Yep, the Aegis Combat System is almost all in Ada (but simulated and developed mostly in C++ and Matlab) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System

zerr 12y ago

I'd love to hear about remote Ada jobs, and not requiring US citizenship...

bitwize 12y ago
Europe loves it some Ada in the avionics space.
- zerr 12y ago
  Yes, but in those types of organizations remote jobs aren't really encouraged.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
    Though it would be cool if you could SSH into an A320 flight management computer from your apartment :-)
    - zerr 12y ago
      Or they could borrow me one for some time... :)

dugmartin 12y ago

We used Ada in my software engineering class in 1992 to try to build a system to do route finding on a map and then generate directions. Each build took 40 to 50 minutes on a pretty nice PC at the time. I don't miss those days.

tormeh 12y ago
Wrong tool for the job. I would do that in Python.
- iak8god 12y ago
  Not in 1992 you wouldn't. This is a strange thing to say without explaining anyway. Would you care to expand on your point? I would expect Ada to run orders of magnitude faster than Python for a task like this.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    I think that when you are doing exploratory programming and you're not quite sure about what you're doing you should have a language that gets out of the way as much as possible, which Python does. Ada and other bondage languages are for when correctness is most important or you need structure because you know the codebase will become large.
    - iak8god 12y ago
      > I think that when you are doing exploratory programming and you're not quite sure about what you're doing you should have a language that gets out of the way as much as possible, which Python does. I agree with this, but am not sure it's on point. Every software engineering class I've heard of is about as far as you can get from exploratory programming.

okatsu 12y ago

As a college student, is Ada still worth learning for (Canadian) development jobs in critical systems? I'd like to think it would give me an edge coming out of school, but I keep reading that new applications are being written in C/C++. Edit: In fact, I interned at an avionics company and they're slowly trying to entirely switch to model-based development, using certified software that generates the code for you.

meej 12y ago

Nice list. I programmed in Ada for eight months in 1997 when I was on a co-op at Rockwell Collins, working on their simulation testbed for their general aviation flight management systems -- I recognize several of the planes listed in the Commercial Aviation section. I ended up really enjoying programming in Ada and was unhappy about having to return to C++ when I went back to school that fall. It was a bit more work to write, but it was easy to read and when it compiled it usually did what you expected it to. It's a language that makes it difficult for you to shoot yourself in the foot.

mtimjones 12y ago

I worked on two geosynchronous communication satellites built on Ada (late 1980s using the TLD compiler). Both had a maximum of 48KB of ROM and 16KB of RAM. That included attitude control, command, telemetry, thermal/power management, fault manager, and little OS. Since then, I've done pretty much nothing but C, but I do miss Ada's features from time to time.