LWN: Comments on "The Ada Initiative launches"

The Ada Initiative launches

mcoleman — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 09:12:11 +0000

Yup. I was curious, but never got my hands on an Ada compiler (GNU Ada or whatever) until it was all over. Even less available than Eiffel.

The Ada Initiative launches

dlang — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 08:17:29 +0000

one of the reasons Ada lost to C++ is that C++ was not standardized, every compiler was a little different, but there was a C++ compiler available everywhere, and cheaply.

Ada on the other hand had very strict certification requirements for compilers, as such making a compiler that could be called Ada was more difficult and expensive, and then you had to pay to get it certified.

this delay in availability and increased cost hurt it's availability for casual use, you would only have an Ada compiler available if the decision was already made to use Ada for the project

The Ada Initiative launches

jordanb — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 04:22:23 +0000

Yes, Ada is a brilliant language. If it had beat C++ in the 1980s, computing would have taken a dramatically different course. (For instance, I don't think Java would have gotten popular).

The Ada Initiative launches

HelloWorld — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:18:54 +0000

Why, what's wrong with Ada?

The Ada Initiative launches

proski — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 21:00:45 +0000

I'm glad it not The Smalltalk Initiative :)

The Ada Initiative launches

eean — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:31:03 +0000

They taught Ada at my college (and still do I think). The professors were just kind of distressed that students actually went out and got Ada jobs with it though. :D

The Ada Initiative launches

pr1268 — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:53:35 +0000

Same here, and (judging by others' comments above) I'm not alone. I'm glad to see this initiative happen.

The Ada Initiative launches

mcoleman — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:59:26 +0000

Yeah, I shuddered briefly (Ada? Oh no!) before I realized what it was really about.

(I guess having a programming language named after oneself could be a mixed blessing.)

The Ada Initiative launches

vaurora — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:54:08 +0000

Amusingly, I'm one of the very few people under age 35 who was actually paid to write in Ada.

The Ada Initiative launches

AlexHudson — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:51:39 +0000

They're named for the same person; not so confusing really.

The Ada Initiative launches

juliank — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:24:59 +0000

Confusing name, my first thought was that it may be related to the Ada programming language.