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Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

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Re: Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

#231

Post by ajxs »

kragen wrote: post #222
roca wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with pulling in the `libc` dependency. It literally means adding two lines of code and then `cargo` manages everything for you. It isn't really third-party; the owner is "rust-lang:libs". I understand that people are conditioned to think APIs are easier to consume when they're in the standard library, because that's true in many languages, especially those that lack a modern package management s…

Having libc updated multiple times per month sounds like a fucking nightmare to me. What am I missing about this situation?

I actually laughed at this comment. I was wondering the same thing. Although this is a cheap shot, how could I resist mentioning that Ada's FFI functionality is updated every 20 years on average and is still ahead of the curve.

Re: Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

#232

Post by pjmlp »

Koshkin wrote: post #152
na85 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody cares about disk size. Embedded people care.

To be fair, “embedded people” do not use disks .

They do when they embedded device happens to be a phone, tablet, POS, medical monitoring device, ...

Re: Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

#233

Post by pjmlp »

atoav wrote: post #113
Gibbon1 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ore attention provided to things like Wasm than there is to things like embedded use cases for example. Things might be better, but last time I checked rust's compiler was a lot slower than C and the binaries were several times bigger. That last one is a big deal for embedded.

Another consideration: Rust’s compiler is also slower because it does a lot more forces you to add error handling. In terms of real impact on developers I never felt it was dramatic. The rust language support in editors is so good that you will catch most errors before compiling. So once everything is dealt with you usually compile and it just works. Binary size is also one of these areas they are dealing with atm.

So how come Ada, Delphi, C++ Builder, VC++, .NET Native, D compilers happen to be much faster?

Re: Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

#234

Post by ajxs »

wrp wrote: post #72

This article promotes a popular misconception of the programming situation for defense projects in the 1970s. There may have been "hundreds of specialized programming languages" in existence that could be used, but just a handful actually predominated. Most aeronautical projects were done in JOVIAL. I've talked about this history with engineers from the 1960s-70s. They did not regard the introduction of Ada as a good…

Speaking of JOVIAL: I found this great talk by Jules Schwartz on the development of JOVIAL. https://youtu.be/sXjCqa4W4iQ It's a great, quite humorous watch.

Re: Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

#235

Post by pjmlp »

kahlonel wrote: post #82

As a side note for people like me who have no option other than C for their safety critical projects, remember there's a MISRA-C standard. If that feels too much, [1] is a good starting point. [1] http://pixelscommander.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/P10.pd...

And Frama-C as well.

https://frama-c.com/

Also warnings as errors, alongside static analyzers.

Re: Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

#236

Post by feanaro »

admax88q wrote: post #196
ajxs wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "If the Ariane V code was written in C and the value simply overflowed, nothing negative would have happened" So... what you're saying is that the language not recognising an exception conditional has occurred is a better outcome in mission critical applications? "wasn't necessary", "It was an oversight", "Which was uncaught"... With these phrases you've already pointed out that the developers had improperly implem…

There is something to be said for not just halting on an error in production systems. Its the same reason assertions are usually turned off on production builds. Yes ideally the programmers should have handled the exception, but once your in production and the system is running, should you really just halt the whole program due to an exception the prograera didn't foresee?

Ideally your type system should be aware of all the exceptions a particular function is able to throw so the compiler forces you to handle all of them before it compiles.

Re: Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

#237

Post by eb0la »

mikorym wrote: post #226

I believe the Eurofighter Typhoon was and still is programmed in Ada.

I believe most NATO weapon systems are programmed in Ada. It just makes natural to integrate anything with the avionics using the available interfaces, specially with the friend-or-foe systems.

Re: Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

#238

Post by pjmlp »

kelnos wrote: post #118
flavio81 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as the desperate need to get something safer than C/C++ without compromising performance and interoperability Object Pascal D ATS Common Lisp Ada even Fortran!! the list can go on and on

I think the fact that all of those have been around for decades, and yet haven't gained much traction, implies that there's something wrong with them that makes them unsuitable. If it's just a matter of marketing and failing the subjectivity of a popularity contest, that's a shame, but I wouldn't leap to assume that's the sole reason.

Being bundled with the OS SDK happens to be a big factor for adoption.

On the other hand, think that some of those languages have commercial compilers being sold for decades and they are still in business.

So, some companies do value the quality of the software they product.

Re: Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

#239

Post by mk89 »

crucini wrote: post #199
na85 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly; I don't work for Boeing or their subcontractor. But I was getting at more of the general sense that as aircraft become more and more computerized we need more rigour and standardization of the sort that gave rise to Ada, and less of the aerospace equivalent of hacking things together in perl.

While I understand the instinct, there is a flip side. A while back Lutz Prechelt posed the phonecode problem, inviting solutions in multiple languages. While he didn't specify error handling, the Perl solutions were on average better at error handling than the compiled language solutions.

I think you are referring to [0]. Thanks a lot for sharing this, it's quite interesting!

[0]: http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/inst/ag-se/teaching/V-EMPIR-2011...

Re: Why Ada Is the Language You Want to Be Programming Your Systems With

#240

Post by pjmlp »

Catsandkites wrote: post #6

What is the employment market like for Ada?

Besides avionics already referred by others, there are train control systems and medical devices.

Basically many industries that fall under the High Integrity Computing umbrella.

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