The Ada 95 Programming Language
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Ada or Ada 95 |
| Name: | Ada or Ada 95 |
| Created: | 1979 |
| By: | Honeywell Systems |
| Home Page: | www.ada.org |
| Acronym: | none |
| Language type: | block-structured |
| Extensions: | .a .ada .adb .ads |
| Tutorial: | |
| Note: | |
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A Pascal-descended language that was at one time made mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the Pentagon. Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, technically, it is precisely what one might expect given that kind of endorsement by fiat; bloated, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description was "The PL/I of the 1980s"). The kindest thing that has been said about it is that there is probably a good small language screaming to get out from inside its vast, elephantine bulk. Ada is an advanced, modern programming language, designed and standardized to support widely recognized software engineering principles: reliability, portability, modularity, reusability, programming as a human activity, efficiency, maintainability, information hiding, abstract data types, concurrent programming, object-oriented programming, et caetera. All Ada compilers must pass a validation test. Ada is a programming language designed to support the construction of long-lived, highly reliable software systems. The language includes facility to define packages of related types, objects, and operations. The packages may be parameterized and the types may be extended to support the construction of libraries of reusable, adaptable software components. The operations may be implemented as subprograms using conventional sequential control structures, or as entries that include synchronization of concurrent threads of control as part of their invocation. The language treats modularity in the physical sense as well, with a facility to support separate compilation. The language includes a complete facility for the support of real-time, concurrent programming. Errors can be signaled as exceptions and handled explicitly. The language also covers systems programming; this requires precise control over the representation of data and access to system-dependent properties. Finally, a predefined environment of standard packages is provided, including facilities for, among others, input-output, string manipulation, numeric elementary functions, and random number data generation. |
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