Tutorial T2: Ada for Business Applications

Gautier de Montmollin, Ada Switzerland

The Ada language was originally developed as a one-fits-all language designed to simplify the language landscape of the US Department of Defense. One particularly highlighted application area was safety-critical, embedded applications, where the Ada language actually excels due, notably, to its strong typing and range checks. However, the "one-fits-all" aspect was quickly and unfortunately lost on the roadside, although it is real. Two successful ingredients of the language in a broad variety of applications are very simple: modularity and superior error detection, which help developing applications of any size – and importantly, applications that do their job correctly. However, a third key ingredient – free or cheap, and easily available programming components – is only now, decades later, materializing thanks to the Alire crate system. We show in this tutorial, with concrete examples, how Ada is a better tool in rapid development of very different kinds of software like user interfaces, number crunching (scientific applications), simulations, data acquisition, and mixes of all that.

Presentation topics

• Promotion of Ada in the early days. Spoiler: it is a good lesson how not to promote a language!
• Some success stories.
• The game changers: GNAT, forums, and Alire.
• Leveraging Ada strengths - stability of the standard, modularity, strong typing, and performance - for delivering robust and durable applications.
• Going through the Alire crates for fishing appropriate tools.

Duration: half-day

Level: No prerequisite needed

Reason for attending

• Discover experiences with Ada outside the Military-Space-Avionics-Railways "ghetto"
• Brainstorm, experiment, discuss what is good and what is missing in the Ada ecosystem
• Kick for starting a project

Presenter

Gautier de Montmollin is a software developer. He holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. His quest for both run time and development time efficiency has trapped him with the Ada language which he has the luck to use professionally (formerly in finance, now in robotics) and for private projects as well. He has presented professional and private projects at various Ada-Europe and FOSDEM conferences.