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Giving Ada a Chance

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Re: Giving Ada a Chance

#2

Post by Bostonian »

His discussion of Ada (not all upper case -- can the HN title be changed?) is interesting, but his criticism of Fortran, although colorful ("eldritch"?) , is vague and likely uninformed. I program in Fortran 95 a lot and can easily understand my code years later.

"Admittedly, I had pictured Ada’s syntax resembling the uncompromising verbosity and rigid construction of COBOL, or perhaps the Lovecraftian hieroglyphics of Fortran’s various eldritch incarnations."

Re: Giving Ada a Chance

#3

Post by ajdude »

This was a good read. I instantly recognized the title of the textbook that is mentioned in the blogpost? I own it!

Having a background in C, I went back and forth with Ada for years, without really jumping all in. In the last couple years in particular, with the growing popularity of Rust, I started to renew my interest.

I'm reminded of a popular reddit thread on r/Ada-- someone called Rust a "toy language", which prompted the valid response that Rust is being used in a lot of commercial products lately. The response[0] kind of brings home the caliber that Ada is capable of, starting with: > Rust being used in commercial products isn’t really the same ballpark as what I’m talking about. It’s not even the same game.

It seems like the easiest way to trend on HN is to make a post such as " rewritten in Rust", but each time I see more and more people advertising Rust, I just wonder why Ada didn't get the credit it deserved as being absolutely bulletproof. Eventually, I came across an "Ada Manifesto" of sorts [1] that finally pushed me to "put my money where my mouth is" and start going all in with the language. (the same author of that "Manifesto" maintained a "Should have Used Ada"[2] series for a while that points out just how using Ada could have stopped certain security vulnerabilities from ever being a problem in the first place)

Ada is anything but dead and there's a lot of interesting things coming out for the 202x specification. I hope to see community enthusiasm grow as people begin to shift their interest more and more to safe languages.

[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/js6edd/regarding_this_... [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/7p12n3/going_allin_wit... [2]: https://annexi-strayline.com/blog/

Re: Giving Ada a Chance

#4

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

I like the "clean feel" of Ada's syntax: it combines the elegance of Python with a bit more structure and does not suffer from Python's significant whitespace issues.

The so-called "Ada comb" structure that is used for packages, subprograms, and even declare blocks makes it easy to find what you are looking for because it makes the source code more regular.

The "Ada comb" is formed by the shape of the source code with the subprogram header / declare, begin, exception, and end forming the "teeth" of the comb and the rest of the source code indented between the "teeth":

function Square_Root (Arg : Float) return Float is

    -- local variables declared here
begin

    -- program work here
exception

    -- exception handling here
end Square_Root;

Re: Giving Ada a Chance

#5

Post by linuxlizard »

Bostonian wrote: post #2

His discussion of Ada (not all upper case -- can the HN title be changed?) is interesting, but his criticism of Fortran, although colorful ("eldritch"?) , is vague and likely uninformed. I program in Fortran 95 a lot and can easily understand my code years later. "Admittedly, I had pictured Ada’s syntax resembling the uncompromising verbosity and rigid construction of COBOL, or perhaps the Lovecraftian hieroglyphics…

I enjoyed Fortran/FORTRAN. Is a nice succinct language.

"Lovecraftian hieroglyphics of Fortran" <-- the author never programmed in Perl, I presume.

Re: Giving Ada a Chance

#6

Post by linuxlizard »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #4

I like the "clean feel" of Ada's syntax: it combines the elegance of Python with a bit more structure and does not suffer from Python's significant whitespace issues. The so-called "Ada comb" structure that is used for packages, subprograms, and even declare blocks makes it easy to find what you are looking for because it makes the source code more regular. The "Ada comb" is formed by the shape of the source code wit…

I did Ada back in university. I wrote a toy Ada compiler for my master's thesis. I was so enamored with Ada's exception handling at the time! When I discovered Python and its similar exception handling, I jumped onto Python in a heartbeat.

Re: Giving Ada a Chance

#10

Post by Tomte »

butterisgood wrote: post #7

Ada shouldn't be all caps I don't think. (I always expand that to the American Dental Association)

I suppose the HN software changed it and the submitter didn't notice (or didn't care). It happens silently after submitting, unlike the "13 too long" message that blocks submission.

Many of those rewrites are benign, even good, many others are stupid and infuriating.

Unfortunately there is no way to have yourself declared to be a "well-known submitter with a history of not editorializing or outrage-optimizing submission titles" and get this thing switched off.

In this case there have been so many discussions and submissions about the American with Disabilities Act that it sounds plausible to be such an automatic rewrite.

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