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Comment by ElCheapo | Hacker News Reader

ADA has existed for a loooong time

And the market for available ADA devs is ... <crickets>

Even the USAF and defense contractors like Lockheed Martin switched to C++ from ADA for the F-35.

ADA is basically dead and buried outside of maintenance for 35+ year old planes, but I doubt those are seeing much active SW development done on them.

And the results suck

Products can suck regardless of the programing language used.

They spent trillions of dollars in the project including millions of dollars of rework.

I would rather feed students in school quality food, give them school supplies, and take care of their needs, rather than wasting valuable resources fixing avoidable defects.

> ADA is basically dead and buried

This made me clutch my chest and gasp and I have no idea why

I think that's a good indication that the reason Rust has become relatively popular is more likely to be its status as the new cool thing rather than anyone actually caring about safety and correctness.

I think it being open source from the get go has also made it a lot more viable.

That's made it accessible to amateurs, but cost is less relevant in safety industries than reliability.

It’s relevant in terms of there being a skilled developer pool to hire from. There are exceptions, but the vast majority of software technologies that have been success have done so by being accessible to hobbiests to install locally, even if that’s not their primary use case.

The good news about professional programmers is that they're capable of learning. Ada is not a hard language to learn, if you have some familiarity with procedural programming (which 99.99% of programmers do). Considering the amount of time spent on safety-critical systems, there's enough time to train up a new hire that only knows one language on Ada, assuming they're actually a competent programmer.

Surely the biggest thing has been accessibility from the start?

It’s all good and well to hear about Ada but how did one start using it for free at home to learn and then evangelize it in the work place?

How did one find learning materials about it in the same amount as an openly available language?

How did one contribute back to the language ?

Lots of cool stuff happens in proprietary spaces first. OSS variants tend to gain traction very quickly though

See https://ada-lang.io/ and https://learn.adacore.com/

Hmmm, I work providing the toolchains for a popular embedded realtime OS used in many safety-critical applications including auto and I have seen a rise in demand for Ada. Not ADA of course, which is an American law and does not apply to most international manufacturers.

I've also had queries about Rust, but it's not going to be available in safety-critical systems for many years. Part of the safety argument is toolchain adherence to a published standard, and there is no such thing for the Rusts (any version). In the in-dash infotainment systems anything goes, so they often run Linux (unsafe) and Python (unsafe) or even Perl (unsafe).

for FOSS the reference implementation is co-created by the consumers of the software. the users will only accept a new release if it fits their functional needs and passes their verifications.

the Linux kernel, the toolchain, or libraries like ssl libs are co created by the very organisations that consume the software. FB, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM with red hat, Suse, Oracle, SAP they all concrete the Linux kernel, and for each kernel release they validate, each of them, the technology.

that's how the reference implementation _is_ the standard.

same goes for rust, which brilliantly leverages build automation of the cargo package repository to protect the compiler and toolchain from regressions:

https://brson.github.io/2017/07/10/how-rust-is-tested

the more crates have sound test suites, the better the quality statement of the compiler is.

Self certification is not going to pass muster with third-party safety auditors. Boeing tried it and the nose kept pointing down.

Actually they make enough noise to keep 7 compiler vendors in business for the last 40 years, with regular ISO standard updates.

It is a little more than just maintenance.

https://www.adacore.com/

https://www.ghs.com/products/ada_optimizing_compilers.html

https://www.ptc.com/en/products/developer-tools/apexada

https://www.ddci.com/products_score/

http://www.irvine.com/tech.html

http://www.ocsystems.com/w/index.php/OCS:PowerAda

http://www.rrsoftware.com/html/prodinf/janus95/j-ada95.htm

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