Re: About Ada...

[mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney)]

In article <19971130215101.QAA07721@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
spiffy1two@aol.com (Spiffy1two) wrote:

>I've been programming in Basic for a while, and now I'm trying to learn Turbo
>Pascal.  What is Ada?

Ada is the language of choice for building large, safety-critical systems. 
In fact, Ada is the only internationally standardized object-oriented
programming language (though I understand the draft ISO C++ standard was
recently accepted).  You can get lots of info at the Ada home page.

<http://www.adahome.com/>

You can get a free, high-quality compiler, called GNAT, available on many
platforms.  

<http://www.gnat.com/>
<ftp://ftp.cs.nyu.edu/pub/gnat/>

>It's the military's official programming language, right?

More like unofficial language.  It used to be the case, when the Ada
Mandate was in effect, that warfighting systems had to be built using Ada,
unless accompanied by a waiver.  The current policy is to select a
programming language in the context of a defined, systems engineering
process.

But don't make the mistake of thinking that only military contractors use
Ada.  Quite the contrary.  Many commercial shops use Ada, and Ada is the
language of choice for railroad control, air traffic control, and other
domains that have safety-critical requirements.  For example, the new
Boeing 777 is an all-Ada plane.  The Ada home has a list of organizations
using Ada.

>But are there any advantages to learning Ada over other languages?  Are
>most of you just Army Programmers? :)  

This programmer is decidedly NOT an "army programmer." :-)  I use Ada by
choice, because it is the best technology available for writing real-time
embedded systems.

Although it is based on Pascal, it definately is NOT Pascal.  It fixed the
idiosyncrasies in that language, and extended it by adding support for
programming-in-the-large, concurrency, and low-level programming.

Learning a language isn't a zero-sum game, either.  Just because you learn
Ada doesn't mean you can't learn other languages too!  Learn Ada and other
languages, and you'll prove to yourself that it's better.

Basically, if you'd rather get your work done, instead of spending all day
in front of a debugger, then use Ada!  And the compiler's free, so what are
you waiting for?

>Sorry if I make myself sound
>stupid in this message but it's kind of hard writing a message about something
>you know nothing about...

There's no such thing as a dumb question.  At least you approach new
technology with an open mind.  For too many programmers dismiss what they
don't understand.  You're willing to learn, which puts you light-years
ahead of others!

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Heaney
Software Development Consultant
<mailto:matthew_heaney@acm.org>
(818) 985-1271