Colossus Cipher Challenge Winner On Ada

An anonymous reader writes "Colossus Cipher Challenge winner Joachim Schueth talks about why he settled on Ada as his language of choice to unravel a code transmitted from the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Germany, from a Lorenz SZ42 Cipher machine (used by the German High Command to relay secret messages during the World War II). 'Ada allowed me to concisely express the algorithms I wanted to implement.'"

Comments

Re:Let the raging tardfight commence

[morgan_greywolf]

He should have used a real programming language like Java or VB.Net.

Pffft. Real men write programs like this:

$ cat >/bin/myprogram

ADA Resurgence?

[Arakageeta]

Has anyone else started to notice an ADA resurgence? I feel like several years ago the general feeling was "ADA is a backwards language used only on old military projects." Now I read a positive story about ADA every few weeks! Was ADA 2005 that good of a language revision?

Re:ADA Resurgence?

[Skeptical1]

Ada is not a backward language. Ada is a palindrome.

Re:ADA Resurgence?

[Barromind]

Ada 2005 is comparatively minor (although some changes, like interfaces, are not that minor). The real improvement was Ada 95. The 95 revision managed to standardize many things that C++/java are now settling.

Ada is not trendy, but it has had built-in portable concurrency and many other killer features for more than a decade. Proper specifications are one of my favs.

Of course there are other factors, like the lack of good and free compilers. Fortunately now the gcc toolchain has put this to rest. Also there are few libraries. Really few. Binding to C is easy, but still a deterrent for the hobbyist.

It's emphasis in making maintenance easy over quick programming really pays in the end, not even in the middle/long term but shortly after getting familiar with the language. I find myself much more productive. When something compiles, I'm sure that the only bugs remaining are logical, not some funny pointer or unexpected type conversion or overflow. Nowadays I rarely fire the debugger more than once a month. My C/C++ has improved because Ada forbids the things that are considered bad practices in C/C++, but you still end doing because "you know better".

I think that Ada is getting now more exposure because, albeit a niche language, Adacore is pushing hard behind it. Also, its SPARK derivative by Praxis has made some headlines with large and difficult projects getting flying marks. SPARK has made static analysis a reality for large projects.

I'd say that anyone capable of discipline will enjoy the benefits of Ada. It's not the thing for quick hacking, but it is perfect for anything not trivial. Software engineers should love it. I have heard somewhere that it is a safe C++, and I concur: feature-wise is more or less on par, it catches bugs sooner and prevents many typical ones.

Have I already said that concurrency is built-in and portable :P? And that inter-thread communication is really well done?

Compiler price..

[renoX]

I think that the main reason why Ada has 'lost' to C++ is that some time ago, C++ compiler were either cheap or free whereas Ada compiler were expensive.

Too bad since Ada is 'by default' a language which is more secure than C++..

Re:Concise??!!

[hey!]

I can't imagine using the words concise and Ada in the same sentence.

Perhaps you should read what you just wrote.