Live data from Hacker News

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

seas.gwu.edu

11–20 of 74 posts

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

#11
post #5

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.

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.

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

#12
post #5

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.

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

    :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

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

#14
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#16
post #5

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.

I was actually a little excited when I found out that the university I went to was an Ada school. Except, it turned out to be outdated information; it was actually a C++ school when I was there, and it started the process of becoming a Java school before I left.

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

#18
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.

it's verbose, but I guess a good IDE would write a lot for you anyways. When it's statically typed the IDE can help you a lot. It touches the difference between what you want to read and what you want to write in software, but nowadays, stuff doesn't have to be written, it can be conveyed with color, font, underline etc.

But the real shocker is that you can't really write serious Ada for free, gnat is a pain, the free toolchain is a joke. My understanding is that there are good expensive private compilers out there. A few month back, I drank the cool aid and started a project in Ada, and the tools were a pain. The 'real time' system was ticking at a constant 1kHz. And making it tickless was looking tricky for a beginner. The formatting tool was bugging without an error message, the cross compilation toolchain for ARM is a pain, etc.

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

#19
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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.

Post reply on HN