A surprising fact about Ada

lachoy on 2006-04-03T12:51:44

From Ada 2005 for deeply embedded systems:

...many embedded applications require high reliability or are safety critical, which allows a language designed for maximum safety to really shine. More than 99 percent of the aviation software in the Boeing 777 is in Ada.

Posted from cwinters.com; read original

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Surprising?

Alias on 2006-04-03T15:17:59

The military and aviation communities have always gone in for Ada.

After all, they invented it.

"Ada - When you absolutely, positively, have to not kill people, or the opposite"

Re:Surprising?

lachoy on 2006-04-03T16:02:55

Well, surprising to me. The military/government part was not surprising, but it was my impression, based purely on talking to other folks and hearing stuff to and fro, that Ada was a little aged and not used quite as much anymore. And for some reason I never associated it with embedded computing either, but that's just ignorance.

And that's why Prof. Dewar won't fly in them!

samtregar on 2006-04-03T18:29:40

My favorite professor from college, Robert Dewar, used to joke about this very fact. He worked on this project, as well as the ADA spec it was based on. He always said he wouldn't fly in this plane since he was all too conscious of how many things could go wrong!

Ada is a great language. If the Perl programming market dried up over night it would be my next stop.

-sam