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

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

#3

Post by circlefavshape »

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

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

#5

Post by baldgeek »

circlefavshape wrote: post #3

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

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.

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

#6

Post by reledi »

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

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

#7

Post by thejteam »

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.

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

#8

Post by krylon »

reledi wrote: post #6

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

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.

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

#9

Post by nabla9 »

thejteam wrote: post #7

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.

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

2. MISRA-C:2004 Guidelines for the use of the C language in critical systems 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

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