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Airbus Chooses GNAT Pro Ada for Development of Unmanned Aerial System

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Re: Airbus Chooses GNAT Pro Ada for Development of Unmanned Aerial System

#11

Post by bsder »

_1gwx wrote: post #6

Not an expert in ADA, but after playing around with it for a while, I don't know why this language doesn't get more praise. It seems to solve a lot of the memory problems Rust solves, albeit in a different way. Its first-class arrays and strong type system seem to go a long way into not having to deal with pointers often, for example. These "features" today would likely be considered part of "a better C", except that…

> Why is ADA not adopted more broadly?

I would argue that Ada suffered because IDEs weren't a common thing when it had its heyday.

For example, Ada (and VHDL which took after it) is really verbose and a single change to a declaration can ripple all over the place.

"Refactoring" is no big deal today. IDEs chop through it really easily.

Back in 1990, on the other hand, you wanted to strangle a language that made you ripple a domain change of 0..255 to 0..65535 through all the code by hand. EVERYWHERE.

There is a reason programmers are so huffy about "type inference", you know.

Currently popular languages are quite "path dependent"--they needed to be popular before IDEs existed but still gain benefits when IDEs became commonplace.

Now that IDEs are common, I suspect that some languages like Ada may slowly gain ground over time. There is far less need for a language to be "stupid editor" friendly.

Edit: Change ADA to Ada.

Re: Airbus Chooses GNAT Pro Ada for Development of Unmanned Aerial System

#12

Post by [deleted] »

bsder wrote: post #11
_1gwx wrote: post #6

Not an expert in ADA, but after playing around with it for a while, I don't know why this language doesn't get more praise. It seems to solve a lot of the memory problems Rust solves, albeit in a different way. Its first-class arrays and strong type system seem to go a long way into not having to deal with pointers often, for example. These "features" today would likely be considered part of "a better C", except that…

> Why is ADA not adopted more broadly? I would argue that Ada suffered because IDEs weren't a common thing when it had its heyday. For example, Ada (and VHDL which took after it) is really verbose and a single change to a declaration can ripple all over the place. "Refactoring" is no big deal today. IDEs chop through it really easily. Back in 1990, on the other hand, you wanted to strangle a language that made you ri…

[deleted]

Re: Airbus Chooses GNAT Pro Ada for Development of Unmanned Aerial System

#13

Post by atlgator »

adamnemecek wrote: post #10
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is ADA not adopted more broadly? The Ada specification is huge. You can learn 90% of C with K&R 2.

The problem is that using C in practice is not covered by K&R.

Any better books you recommend?

Re: Airbus Chooses GNAT Pro Ada for Development of Unmanned Aerial System

#15

Post by svvcfb1212 »

_1gwx wrote: post #6

Not an expert in ADA, but after playing around with it for a while, I don't know why this language doesn't get more praise. It seems to solve a lot of the memory problems Rust solves, albeit in a different way. Its first-class arrays and strong type system seem to go a long way into not having to deal with pointers often, for example. These "features" today would likely be considered part of "a better C", except that…

Ada, not ADA. It’s named after Ada Lovelace, not an abbreviation.

Re: Airbus Chooses GNAT Pro Ada for Development of Unmanned Aerial System

#17

Post by ogre_codes »

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but one of the reasons I learned Ada in college is because it was used by the DOD. I'm not sure if it's still a requirement for DOD projects, but I believe it was at the time. Which would perhaps explain why Airbus chose Ada. Either that or simply the engineers who are on the project were exposed to/ used Ada during other DOD projects.

Since college, I've never touched it again.

Re: Airbus Chooses GNAT Pro Ada for Development of Unmanned Aerial System

#18

Post by Jtsummers »

ogre_codes wrote: post #17

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but one of the reasons I learned Ada in college is because it was used by the DOD. I'm not sure if it's still a requirement for DOD projects, but I believe it was at the time. Which would perhaps explain why Airbus chose Ada. Either that or simply the engineers who are on the project were exposed to/ used Ada during other DOD projects. Since college, I've never touched it again…

It hasn't been a requirement for a long time, though it is used in some DOD projects still.

Re: Airbus Chooses GNAT Pro Ada for Development of Unmanned Aerial System

#19

Post by fulafel »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #9
_1gwx wrote: post #6

Not an expert in ADA, but after playing around with it for a while, I don't know why this language doesn't get more praise. It seems to solve a lot of the memory problems Rust solves, albeit in a different way. Its first-class arrays and strong type system seem to go a long way into not having to deal with pointers often, for example. These "features" today would likely be considered part of "a better C", except that…

> Why is ADA not adopted more broadly? The Ada specification is huge. You can learn 90% of C with K&R 2.

Web search saver: Ada '83 spec is 338 pages (https://quicksearch.dla.mil/qsDocDetails.aspx?ident_number=3...)

For C life is easy as you can leave things undefined with the caveat "dragons may fly out of your nose" :)

An alternative example of a small spec language might be Scheme (especially pre-R6RS): https://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/r5rs.pdf

Re: Airbus Chooses GNAT Pro Ada for Development of Unmanned Aerial System

#20

Post by foerbert »

bsder wrote: post #11
_1gwx wrote: post #6

Not an expert in ADA, but after playing around with it for a while, I don't know why this language doesn't get more praise. It seems to solve a lot of the memory problems Rust solves, albeit in a different way. Its first-class arrays and strong type system seem to go a long way into not having to deal with pointers often, for example. These "features" today would likely be considered part of "a better C", except that…

> Why is ADA not adopted more broadly? I would argue that Ada suffered because IDEs weren't a common thing when it had its heyday. For example, Ada (and VHDL which took after it) is really verbose and a single change to a declaration can ripple all over the place. "Refactoring" is no big deal today. IDEs chop through it really easily. Back in 1990, on the other hand, you wanted to strangle a language that made you ri…

I agree with you, but I just have to say that if you're having to change a bunch of 255s to 65535 everywhere, you've done things poorly. Ada has a bunch of nice features to refer to these sorts of limits by names or methods that won't need to be changed. For those not familiar with Ada, one way might be MyInteger'Last, which will give the largest valid value for the type.

I may or may not be a little crazy about Ada...

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