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Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages
11–20 of 242 posts
Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages
#12I am wondering what the Ada equivalent of affine types is. What is the feature that solves the problem that affine types solve in Rust.
Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages
#13Wonderful article and a good fit with HN’s motto of “move slowly and preserve things” as opposed to Silicon Valley’s jingoistic “move fast and break things”.
It highlights the often perplexing human tendency to reinvent rather than reuse. Why do we, as a species, ignore hard-won experience and instead restart? In doing so, often making mistakes that could have been avoided if we’d taken the time or had the curiosity/humility to learn from others. This seems particularly prevalent in software: “standing on the feet of giants” is a default rather than exception.
That aside, the article was thoroughly educational and enjoyable. I came away with much-deepened insight and admiration for those involved in researching, designing and building the language. Resolved to find and read the referenced “steelman” and language design rationale papers.
Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages
#14off-topic, this article has almost the same theme as dawnfox/dayfox which I love. It fits nicely with my terminal on the left. Cool stuff
Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages
#15The Twitter account is from April 2026:
https://xcancel.com/Iqiipi_Essays
There is no named public author. A truly amazing productivity for such a short time period and generously the author does not take any credit.
Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages
#16I am wondering what the Ada equivalent of affine types is. What is the feature that solves the problem that affine types solve in Rust.
Limited controlled types probably come closest.
https://learn.adacore.com/courses/advanced-ada/parts/resourc...
Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or Algol 68, which is doing a comeback.
Or even ESPOL and its evolution, NEWP, never went away, only available to Unisys customers that care about security as top deployment priority.
I wish more people knew about the Burroughs Large Systems[0] machines. I haven't written any code for them, but I got turned-on to them by a financial Customer who ran a ClearPath Series A MCP system (and later one of the NT-based Clearpath machines with the SCAMP processor on a card) back in the late 90s, and later by a fellow contractor who did ALGOL programming for Unisys in the mid-70s and early 80s. It seems like an architecture with an uncompromising attitude toward security, and an utterly parallel universe to what the rest of the industry is (except for, perhaps, the IBM AS/400, at least in the sense of being uncompromising on design ideals).
Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or even ESPOL and its evolution, NEWP, never went away, only available to Unisys customers that care about security as top deployment priority.
I wish more people knew about the Burroughs Large Systems[0] machines. I haven't written any code for them, but I got turned-on to them by a financial Customer who ran a ClearPath Series A MCP system (and later one of the NT-based Clearpath machines with the SCAMP processor on a card) back in the late 90s, and later by a fellow contractor who did ALGOL programming for Unisys in the mid-70s and early 80s. It seems lik…
Yes, IBM i and z/OS, are the other survivors.
Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages
#19It'd be a neat trick to have a single unified language which could bridge the gap between software and hardware description languages.
It's an intriguing idea. Having experience with software but almost none (only hobbyist) in hardware, I imagine it'd require a strong type system and mathematical foundation. Perhaps something like Agda, a language that is a proof assistant and theorem prover, with which one can write executable programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agda_(programming_language)
Re: Ada, its design, and the language that built the languages
#20Wonderful article and a good fit with HN’s motto of “move slowly and preserve things” as opposed to Silicon Valley’s jingoistic “move fast and break things”. It highlights the often perplexing human tendency to reinvent rather than reuse. Why do we, as a species, ignore hard-won experience and instead restart? In doing so, often making mistakes that could have been avoided if we’d taken the time or had the curiosity/…
Does anyone understand how/why old HN accounts become mouthpieces for language models?