Introduction to Ada • Hacker News Board

Re: Introduction to Ada

#21

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

non-entity wrote: post #18

TedDallas wrote: post #2

Nice documentation. Ada looks a lot like Pascal. It is interesting that SPARK is a subset of subset of Ada.

Pascal-like syntax seemed to have been popular around the time. Outside the Writh languages(Pascal, Modula, Oberon) and Ada, I was reading about CHILL[0] the other day, which is supposedly similar to Ada, but was rather domain specific. Sadly I don't think any modern, free implementations exist. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHILL

Pascal is a simplification from ALGOL, so it is actually most ALGOL derived languages.

C description tends to refer to ALGOL influence, but it just boils down to structured programming and the data types. Syntax has nothing from ALGOL.

Re: Introduction to Ada

#22

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:09 AM UTC

Ice_cream_suit wrote: post #4

Their marketing folks should introduce Ada certification. Many developers would jump through hoops to get any dodgy certification. I have seen dubious FEMA certifications and NFA certifications on some LinkedIn pages.

I have plenty of certifications, not because I value them, rather they are the way many corporate vendors make money with lots of software used by Fortune 500, which use them to gate access to their software.

Sales usually are done as X licenses + at least Y certifications.

Re: Introduction to Ada

#23

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

Just as a heads up that although Ada Core is the most well known and FOSS friendly Ada vendor, there are still around 5 compilers vendors.

Re: Introduction to Ada

#24

Post by non-entity » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:12 AM UTC

stolen_biscuit wrote: post #3

Ada is one of those languages that I always wish I had a reason to program in

Man there are so many of those languages for me. A lot of mainstream languages seem to mass-add features, but the two I'd like to see people look at are Ada's type system and Erlang-like native bitstring handling.

Re: Introduction to Ada

#25

Post by dwheeler » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

The GNAT Ada compiler is open source, generates good code, and has really good error messages. There's a story behind its development, which I tried to summarize here:

https://dwheeler.com/essays/make-it-simple-dewar.html

Re: Introduction to Ada

#26

Post by burfog » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

synack wrote: post #13

khazhoux wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just found this: https://blog.adacore.com/a-modern-syntax-for-ada

That was an April Fools' joke.

Seriously, the curly braces are a huge improvement. That's no joke.

The "fn" and ":" are good too.

I'm less sure about "include", because I doubt Ada does textual inclusion. If it does, then that is good too. Otherwise, better choices might be: using, use, require, requires, depend, depends, external, library, unit, module...

Re: Introduction to Ada

#27

Post by tlear » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #7

stolen_biscuit wrote: post #3

Ada is one of those languages that I always wish I had a reason to program in

It was my first language i learned in school... in Radford ( Virginia), before my university switched to Java. ADA was/is popular with defense contractors, so a lot of schools in VA teach it. It is very safe language, being both static typed, and strong typed. It was originally a procedural language, but later they added some OO to it. (to folks that don't know what a imperative language is, think of a language where…

It looks similar to Pascal? I learned to program in Pascal as a kid always had a soft spot for it

Re: Introduction to Ada

#28

Post by pietroppeter » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:33 AM UTC

Very nice introduction. For those interested in a modern language that has a strong type system as in Ada and it is also growing safety capabilities à la SPARK, you might want to check out Nim.

https://nim-lang.org/ https://nim-lang.org/blog/2020/06/08/static-analysis.html

Re: Introduction to Ada

#29

Post by wirrbel » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:34 AM UTC

After having seen the C++ guidelines of the automobile industry i wish we'd just use Ada more..

Re: Introduction to Ada

#30

Post by non-entity » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #5

stolen_biscuit wrote: post #3

Ada is one of those languages that I always wish I had a reason to program in

It's always had a strange super elite, if you use ada you must mean serious business kind of vibe to it. I guess it's mostly the applications its used in, but the language itself has this strict rigidity to it. It's like the marines or special forces of programming languages or something.

Outside the unpopular syntax, I've wondered if the goverment / DoD association has scared people away.