
Ada 2012 Language Standard Approved by ISO - qznc
http://www.adacore.com/press/ada-2012-language-approved
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codewright
But does it have awesome rockstar ninja tech like Node.js?

I mean, if I don't have my event loops (event loops are web-scale, you see)
and MangoDB ORM/ODM/object-state-propagator I can't be productive. (Gotta slam
code for my startup!)

Also I heard Ada's type system was responsible for blowing up that Ariane V
rocket. Clearly ninja-tech like JavaScript's weak/dynamic type system wouldn't
have caused that.

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olaf
> Also I heard Ada's type system was responsible for blowing up that Ariane V
> rocket.

Please post proved facts, not wrong, misleading "I heard" FUD.

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jacques_chester
That's the joke.

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jacques_chester
Today while programming in Javascript I found myself wishing for static typing
and preconditions. Honestly. It'd have saved me a fair amount of time.

I ... I think this is what getting old feels like.

~~~
16s
Older and wiser. Compilers and static typing are a good thing if you care
about code quality and reliability.

~~~
jacques_chester
At least on the server side I can use stricter languages. On the client I can
do it only indirectly (I'm thinking of playing with TypeScript ... someday).

~~~
tikhonj
You should check out js_of_ocaml [1]. It's a very good compiler from OCaml to
JavaScript which lets you interface with the DOM and existing JavaScript
libraries relatively easily. You can play around with OCaml in the browser[2],
which was implemented using js_of_ocaml.

[1]: <http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/>

[2]: <http://try.ocamlpro.com/>

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mhd
One problem that Ada shares with Fortran is that a lot of the users out there
are still restricted to old standards. Just like you still find some projects
that have to code in Fortran 77, I found quite a few Ada books and guides
where Ada95 is still the new kid on the block.

Let's see how that changes. One only has to think of C++, where for quite a
while a lot of people urged strongly against template metaprogramming and
other more modern features, basically sticking with a '90s C++, but now that
C++11 out, everyone is really hurrying to get on the bandwagon again, just
because a few of the new features are _that_ good.

Looks like I'm spending my holidays with some statically typed compiled
languages again. Might as well try finishing/redoing that RPG I started out in
'94. Design notes must be somewhere, though I guess I won't have much luck
with my backup floppies.

~~~
jordanb
The sad thing is that Norman Cohen has decided not to update _Ada as a Second
Language_ for Ada 05. It's just about the best book I've ever read for any
computer language.

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s-phi-nl
For all those advocating Ada on this thread, could you recommend a good
tutorial to us? I love learning about new programming languages, but
particularly for a relatively-obscure language like Ada, I would appreciate a
recommendation.

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mikeflynn
When I started in my CS program years ago, Ada was the teaching language (now
I believe they moved to Java like everyone else). At the time I remember
joining in the grumbling "Why do we have to learn Ada?! Who the hell uses
Ada?" ...but now, looking back, it was a pretty good teaching language: You
don't have to worry about little details like C, OOP, decent complier tools,
etc.

I have 5 or 6 Ada textbooks still sitting on my shelf, which are now even
further outdated. Maybe I'll go get the latest GNAT and play with Ada again to
pretend I still use those books.

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michaelfeathers
I have an Ada textbook that mentions in its foreward that it's appropriate
that Ada was named after the first programmer because it will likely be the
last major programming language. The book was written in the early 1990s.

~~~
jacques_chester
I've done a lot of programming in PL/SQL, which was "inspired" by Ada.

And by "inspired" I mean it has the same chatty Pascal-descendent syntax and
inline queries and that's about it.

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JulianMorrison
Ada is a really nice, really effective language for being careful in, and yet
compiling low-level and with a great deal of on-the-metal control, possibly
more so than C without cheating and stepping outside the language. And yet,
inexplicably, it never became popular. It can't be compiler support, there's
GNAT and there has been for over a decade.

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saosebastiao
From someone who has never even ventured into object-oriented programming: Why
Ada? From the Wikipedia level overview, it doesn't seem like it offers much
over Java or C# (remember, I haven't touched any of the three). It does look
to be quite a bit more readable, which I like, but I still would have a hard
time justifying its use over languages that have endless libraries and strong
communities with similar features/paradigms. I'm sincere about the question,
and I hope this doesn't come off as snarky.

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dkhenry
I _really_ want to do something productive in Ada. Its just that every time I
sit down and look at it the pragmatist in me balks and I end up doing it in C
or Scala. It reminds of ALGO 60. A Language that on paper should have been the
goto language ( even had the same DoD support Ada had/has ) , but never gained
traction outside a small niche.

~~~
jordanb
Ada has Pascal-like syntax for sure. The designers were fans of Pascal so that
was their starting point. Personally after using it for a while it really grew
on me. I especially liked having := for assignment and = for equality.

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protomyth
Ada was the first language I ran into that would make guesses about your code
(e.g. type of variable) and that scared me greatly. It was also fun to see the
Ada compiler generate better code than the C compiler.

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cpeterso
Which programming language wins the award for "Most Strongly (Statically)
Typed"? How much of Ada's advantages for safety-critical systems is from
language or runtime features _not_ related to type safety?

~~~
gtani
I think this chart is a few years old, and scala and haskell look different
(type holes, deferred type checks, simplistically, better "undefined" in
haskell)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3165525/go-scala-go-
what-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3165525/go-scala-go-what-are-the-
main-differences)

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ihsw
ISO has been bought and paid for by Microsoft in the past, they cannot be
trusted anymore.

