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Ada 2012 Language Approved As Standard By ISO
hypnosec writes "The Ada Resource Association (ARA) announced that the Ada 2012 programming language has been approved and published as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Announcing the development, ARA and Ada-Europe said that the new version brings with it the concept of contract-based programming, Concurrency and Multicore Support, Increased Expressiveness and Container Enhancements.'"
I've seen it. Nothing crazy or particularly unusual about it.
Big thing with ADA is the focus on reducing errors. Very strongly typed with a lot of compile time checking and strong run time checks (and the ability to handle them gracefully). It seems to be used in environments where reliability and error free execution are critical: defense, aviation (the planes and air traffic control), etc. I've never heard of it used in the medical field but it would make sense.
Like anything else though there is of course trade offs to support this. Plus because ADA is expensive (yes yes, I know, GNAT..) and people who know it are rare and expensive. This seems to have turned it into a niche language.
Also the ADA community in general are an unusual bunch. There is almost an apple level fanboyism going on.. it's weird.
I used it once, for a course on parallel programming.
the choice of ADA for that language by the faculty was stupid as hell - it's practically the only course in that university that uses ADA so the course becomes an ADA course rather than parallel programming course, the practice work is really trivial except for the fact that it's ada and it's a bitch to find ada information that isn't loaded with "IT'S MILITARY GRADE, YO!!!" bullshit for the first 10 pages of the text, making it a bitch to find out the simplest things about string manipulation and output.
on the other hand, ADA had such sweet parallel programming mechanisms(rendezvous etc) that you didn't have to learn much anything about parallel programming, last I heard they even dropped semaphores from the course work.
it's supposed to be really reliable though, but if every fucking book about it has to justify it's existence with that for half the book.. it just starts feeling fishy.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.