Amiga Ada compilers?

[Tigger]

Why on earth would you want one.  And thats coming from someone who used to teach it in school and wrote a certifed compiler for it basically by myself.  The DOD thankfully is abandoning ADA with a vengeance, which is a good idea in most instandes.
        -Tig

[Tigger]

jnordness wrote:
Thanks, I'll look into GNAT. I know it's not commonly used nowadays, but I'm an Aerospace Engineering major, and there are still lots of things that use Ada in the aerospace industry. The Arian-5 rocket and some subsystems on the new 777 come to mind. I'm still new to programming, but so far I like Ada more than C++, even though the latter is WAY more commonly used. Do you really think Ada is that bad Tigger?

I think its completely unused in any new program, and in actuality it was a bad fit for embedded systems, it and the 1750 are gone, and thats probably a good thing.   I design thinks for Osprey, C130, Apache, F-18, B-52!!!!!!!! (See if you can figure out which new program I am excited about).  Apache is the last of those to use Ada and we dropped it 7 or 8 years ago at least.   777 had been done for a long time, the ADA stuff  in it is very small and mostly legacy, nothing new gets done in ADA, sorry though I may agree that Ada is better in some ways then C++, you are more likely to need to use C++ in your future work.  ADA wasnt written for avionics, it was written for huge programs (ground stations, etc) and forced on the avionics field for awhile.  
    -Tig

[Tigger]

Which is funny, because you guys dont do a whole lot of military systems on that side of the pond.  As I said, its a poor OS for avionics, it sucks up resources, etc and doesnt buy you alot.   The first part of the ADA spec says it all.  Because many military programs involve 250K-2M lines of code, we have developed ADA.  The problem is there isnt alot of avionics systems that use that much code and its not an language for a lean product (which most embedded avionics fit into).   The idea for ADA came about because of the upgrade of the Valhalla facility (ie Cheyenne Mountain) where we keep the Stargate .  The update of the early warning system which is a huge amount of code, got us into developing ADA which was great for products with a huge amount of code.  I was presenting at an ADA conference, and the guy before me, said that memory and throughput werent important for embedded systems which is why ADA was great.  I basically think that was the silliest thing I have ever heard at a conference.  Running out of memory or responding slow in an aircraft causes deaths.  GCAS or TCAS is something thats not terribly useful when its slow.  Modern processors have gotten rid of some of this, but in reality even in the DO-178B field (and I have delivered and will continue to deliver products certed that way), ADA use is dwindling, and really since its not being forced on us by the DOD, its less likely we will ever use it again, though we have 4 or 5 ADA experts in the software section.          
   -Tig

[Tigger]

Edit: Thinking it over, I guess Tigger really ment B-52.

B-52 is getting a whole new electronics suite, I'm designing the biggest baddest aircraft communication system ever.
    -Tig
 

[Tigger]

Oh its absolutely worth learning, shoot COBOL was worth learning just for all the money I made fixing the 2K bug, and its really a dead language.   I think multiple languages is always good, I just think that you are likely to use your C++ more, and wouldnt neglect it because of a fascination with ADA.   Plus there is alot of Legacy ADA stuff out there.   Maintence of current legacy systems is over 1/2 of what we end up doing, so being able to help with a program done in ADA, Jovial, Forth, C, C++, always makes you a better candidate for a job.
     -Tig