How many of you have Ada programming careers?

How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Nick Gordon]

I'm currently learning Ada mostly as an exercise in learning strong typing, 
but I also like the principle of strong, safe coding that resists bugs and errors. 
Advertising aside, I have entertained over the last several months learning Ada to a professional level, 
in the way that my current undergraduate studies are pushing Ruby, Java, and C++.

Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?

Just curious! Any other relevant discussion is welcomed and I would love to chat about it.

Nick

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 07:46:50 GMT, Nick Gordon wrote:

> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable
> regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work?

I do.

> If you do, did
> you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and
> move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?

I was taught FORTRAN, started systems programming in Assembler and FORTRAN.
I learned Ada before C.

C was unusable that time. It took long time and much more powerful machines
before I could use C. Compilation of hello-world took about 15 min with the
5-stage C compiler under RSX-11.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[J-P. Rosen]

Le 06/11/2015 08:46, Nick Gordon a écrit :
> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite
> venerable regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? 

My company is about training and consulting in Ada, so yes, I use it
everyday.

> If
> you do, did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems
> programmer in C, and move over to Ada because of the safety, or
> something like that?
I started as a system engineer in assembly, and programmed in Pascal and
several other languages... but very few C. But it was a long time ago...

-- 
J-P. Rosen
Adalog
2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00
http://www.adalog.fr

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Aurele]

Started with Assembler, then FORTRAN, and later switched (and stayed) with  Ada (around the same time as Pascal but before C). C++ sucks (especially interface methods) but its not easy to find a job in Ada these days :/ 

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Niklas Holsti]

On 15-11-06 09:46 , Nick Gordon wrote:
> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite
> venerable regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If
> you do, did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems
> programmer in C, and move over to Ada because of the safety, or
> something like that?

I started with Burroughs Extended Algol around 1970. I also learned and 
professionally used Pascal, Fortran, Cobol, various Basics, assembly 
languages, C, ... First experience with Ada in mid-1980's IIRC, with DEC 
Ada on MicroVAX. Currently doing Ada professionally, both in my day job 
(spacecraft on-board SW, since about 1995) and in my own side business 
(program analysis tools).

-- 
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
       .      @       .

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[AdaMagica]

I started with Algol 60 in the mid 70s, later Fortran IV and 77 (terrible language), short excursion to PL 1; then Pascal (nice language but unusable for large systems). When I happened to meet Ada, it had everything Pascal was missing.

I used Ada for 25 years. I've been in retirement for four years now.

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Jeffrey R. Carter]

On 11/06/2015 12:46 AM, Nick Gordon wrote:
> 
> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable
> regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did you
> start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and move over
> to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?

I started out with FORTRAN-66. At various times I have also used assemblers, C,
COBOL, DATABUS, Pascal, Python, and Ratfor professionally.

I learned Ada in 1984 and it remains the best designed language of any I've
encountered.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"There's no messiah here. There's a mess all right, but no messiah."
Monty Python's Life of Brian
84

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Hadrien Grasland]

Hi Nick !

Myself, I learned programming in Delphi as a kid, then quickly figured out that in order to leverage third-party libraries, C and C++ were the way to go. However, I never was entirely satisfied with these languages, as their countless design errors kept jumping in my face (top pet peeves: "=" as an assignment operator AND an expression, ";" as the null statement, ill-defined int/long/short semantics, and the worst array semantics I have ever seen).

A decade later, I heard about Ada from my brother taking programming classes ("ugh, that compiler is SO annoying"), and it got me interested as I love picky compilers that help me do the right thing. After learning it, it quickly became my favorite language for hobby programming with no third-party dependencies (e.g. OSdeving).

I would love to program in Ada at work, but my professional background is in scientific computing and that realm is governed by C, C++, Fortran, and a growing fraction of Python, together with parallel-friendly extensions to these languages (OpenMP, CUDA, MPI...). From my understanding of the French job market, Ada jobs here are mostly centered on embedded and military computing, a realm where recruiters seem unwilling to take risks with job applications that have "original" backgrounds.

So I guess for now, unless I end up on a surprisingly open-minded company for my next job, Ada programming will remain a hobby for me ;)

Hadrien

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[mockturtle]

Hi Nick,
I was born in the '60, so in the '80 I had the right age to be fascinated by the first home computers (ZXes, Vic 20, ...).  My very first language were BASIC (at home) and FORTRAN (at high school, they made a special course on FORTRAN).  Being a curious, since then I learned and used a good amount of languages.... In no special order: FORTRAN, Tcl/Tk, LISP, a bit of FORTH, PostScript, C (ugh!), C++ (double ugh!), Ruby, PHP (double ugh with somersaults!), few Assemblers...

One day I read about Ada on a Italian computer magazine.  I gave it a try and... I felt in love with it.

About my work, I am in University and I do research and teach in signal processing.  I mostly use Matlab for my DSP stuff, but for long-lived software Ada is the language of my choice (choice that I impose on the students that do their final project with me... Usually they love Ada too).

Riccardo

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Paul Rubin]

Nick Gordon <annihilan@gmail.com> writes:
> I wonder how many of you use Ada at work?

I don't use it at work myself, but I got interested in part because a
couple of my co-workers used it at previous jobs of theirs (they had
been at an aerospace company) and they liked it.  I might use it for
something in the future if the right situation comes up.

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Jerry Petrey]

On 11/6/2015 12:46 AM, Nick Gordon wrote:

> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?
>
> Just curious! Any other relevant discussion is welcomed and I would love to chat about it.
>
> Nick
>

I starting programming using assembler, BASIC, C, Logo, Forth, and 
Pascal but switched to Ada about 25 years ago and never left it.  I 
worked mostly in the aerospace industry and since retiring I still use 
Ada a lot for embedded applications (mostly using the ARM F4 and F7 
micro-controllers).

Jerry

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[R. B. Love]

Nick Gordon <annihilan@gmail.com> writes:

> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable regarding
> Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did you start with
> Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and move over to Ada because
> of the safety, or something like that?

I've used Ada in my job at the Johnson Space Center for about 20 years
but I'm sad to say NASA is switching to C++.   Funny, that project is
way behind.   It may be time for me to think about retiring.

How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Nick Gordon]

It's a little disheartening to hear that so many of you worked in the past as Ada programmers, and only a few of you currently do.
I suppose I had gotten it in my head that Ada was a bit like COBOL, in that it was a niche language with high demand that would practically require programmers at any given time, which excited me on the grounds of making some good money and using a language that, now that I'm cresting the hill of understanding the strong typing, I'm quite enjoying.

I still plan on learning how to Ada, mostly because I'm interested in system programming, embedded systems, and to a lesser extent operating system development.

I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing from all of you, though. I was under the impression that you all were roughly my age (21), but I am obviously thoroughly wrong. I knew it when I saw all the ALGOL and FORTRAN starts!

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Leo Brewin]

I switched to Ada about 5 years ago. I cut my teeth on Pascal (20 years) and Fortran (3 years). I moved over to Ada after it became clear that the gpc (the gnu pascal compiler) was falling behind the gcc collection. The change to Ada was amazing. It's such a fantastic language with all the elements I need (I work in large scale scientific computation in a university maths department). I love the strong typing, I love the simplicity of creating new types and extending operations on them. I have no need of any other computational language (though for housekeeping I do use bash and ruby). I look at my colleagues  and the mess that is their Fortran and C and I thank my lucky stars that I'm using Ada -- the array syntax of C is just too scary (amongst so many other problems). I love the use of attributes, generics, initialisation, tasking, packages, exceptions. Where do I stop? Its just the ideal language for scientific computing. Yes, I'm a true believer.

Cheers,
Leo

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Jeffrey R. Carter]

On 11/06/2015 08:39 PM, Nick Gordon wrote:
> 
> I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing from all of you, though. I was under the
> impression that you all were roughly my age (21), but I am obviously
> thoroughly wrong. I knew it when I saw all the ALGOL and FORTRAN starts!

We're all 25 in our minds.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"There's no messiah here. There's a mess all right, but no messiah."
Monty Python's Life of Brian
84

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Per Sandberg]

Well

Started with Pascal, C and Assembly back in the mid 80:s and went to 
Philips later acquired by SAAB to start build a new generation of 
Command And Control Systems written in Ada and have been there since 
then. So now days i am using Ada, C, C++, Java, Python, Go, Make, Word, 
Excel, and many more to build systems but the main language is Ada.

And as a side track because we needed it i got involved in
   http://www.adacore.com/defense-avionics-ada-dds
some 6 ago.

/Per


Den 2015-11-06 08:46, Nick Gordon skrev:
> I'm currently learning Ada mostly as an exercise in learning strong typing,
> but I also like the principle of strong, safe coding that resists bugs and errors.
> Advertising aside, I have entertained over the last several months learning Ada to a professional level,
> in the way that my current undergraduate studies are pushing Ruby, Java, and C++.
>
> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?
>
> Just curious! Any other relevant discussion is welcomed and I would love to chat about it.
>
> Nick
>

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Per Sandberg]

Should be "6 years ago".
/Per



Den 2015-11-07 08:43, Per Sandberg skrev:
> Well
>
> Started with Pascal, C and Assembly back in the mid 80:s and went to
> Philips later acquired by SAAB to start build a new generation of
> Command And Control Systems written in Ada and have been there since
> then. So now days i am using Ada, C, C++, Java, Python, Go, Make, Word,
> Excel, and many more to build systems but the main language is Ada.
>
> And as a side track because we needed it i got involved in
>    http://www.adacore.com/defense-avionics-ada-dds
> some 6 ago.
>
> /Per
>
>
> Den 2015-11-06 08:46, Nick Gordon skrev:
>> I'm currently learning Ada mostly as an exercise in learning strong
>> typing,
>> but I also like the principle of strong, safe coding that resists bugs
>> and errors.
>> Advertising aside, I have entertained over the last several months
>> learning Ada to a professional level,
>> in the way that my current undergraduate studies are pushing Ruby,
>> Java, and C++.
>>
>> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable
>> regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do,
>> did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C,
>> and move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?
>>
>> Just curious! Any other relevant discussion is welcomed and I would
>> love to chat about it.
>>
>> Nick
>>

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Charles H. Sampson]

Nick Gordon <annihilan@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm currently learning Ada mostly as an exercise in learning strong
> typing, but I also like the principle of strong, safe coding that resists
> bugs and errors. Advertising aside, I have entertained over the last
> several months learning Ada to a professional level, in the way that my
> current undergraduate studies are pushing Ruby, Java, and C++.
> 
> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable
> regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did
> you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and
> move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?
> 
> Just curious! Any other relevant discussion is welcomed and I would love
> to chat about it.

The last 20 or so years of my career, I worked in nothing but Ada. It
was three implementation projects, maybe more, and a lot of language
instruction.

I tried to end my career without ever having written any C. Alas, I was
forced toward the end to write one 6-line C program. I had tried to
interface our Ada code to an operating system function for a Unix-link
OS. With the C code I was able to show that the function was badly
implemented; my interface code was good.

Incidentally, the last project I worked on was a massively parallel Navy
system (over 160 tasks). As I retired, the Navy had let a contract for
the follow-on system. It would use a lot of our code (no reinventing the
wheel - good) but the first thing that would be done is to convert our
Ada code to C++.

Charlie
-- 
Nobody in this country got rich on his own.  You built a factory--good.
But you moved your goods on roads we all paid for.  You hired workers we
all paid to educate. So keep a big hunk of the money from your factory.
But take a hunk and pay it forward.  Elizabeth Warren (paraphrased)

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[gautier_niouzes]

On the private/hobby side: various BASIC's in the teenage, then various Pascal's as more "solid" languages, then Ada as having found *the* unfragmented, better Pascal.
On the job side, I brought Ada to the job. If you train a few backups (to mitigate the key-person issue) and as long as users are happy (especially to have a reliable and fast in-house software that is not crashing all day), it is possible.
Inbetween, Modula-2 and FORTRAN at the University for programming course and numerics respectively.
_________________________ 
Gautier's Ada programming 
http://www.openhub.net/accounts/gautier_bd

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Martin]

On Friday, November 6, 2015 at 7:46:53 AM UTC, Nick Gordon wrote:
> I'm currently learning Ada mostly as an exercise in learning strong typing, 
> but I also like the principle of strong, safe coding that resists bugs and errors. 
> Advertising aside, I have entertained over the last several months learning Ada to a professional level, 
> in the way that my current undergraduate studies are pushing Ruby, Java, and C++.
> 
> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?
> 
> Just curious! Any other relevant discussion is welcomed and I would love to chat about it.
> 
> Nick

My first home computer was a ZX Spectrum, so Sinclair Basic + Z80 assembler were my first programming languages. 

After that I was taught COBOL, C, SML/NJ.

Then I professionally worked in a couple of real-time variants of Pascal (including Pascal/D80 - developed by our own John Barnes), all versions of Ada, a couple of C and C++, bash, csh, MS-DOS, Java and Python.

Of all those languages Ada is by far the most easy to get things done, correctly and quickly.

I did (nearly) laugh when a colleague, with a very C-bias, referred to a 'debugging phase'...only when you're programming with a language beginning with 'C'...and I think they thought this was 'normal'!!

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Chris Moore]

On 06/11/2015 07:46, Nick Gordon wrote:
> I'm currently learning Ada mostly as an exercise in learning strong typing,
> but I also like the principle of strong, safe coding that resists bugs and errors.
> Advertising aside, I have entertained over the last several months learning Ada to a professional level,
> in the way that my current undergraduate studies are pushing Ruby, Java, and C++.

That's a good starting list.  No functional languages tho.

> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?

Yes, I use Ada at work (defense). I started with BBC basic and 6502 
assembler, moved on to Pascal and C.  Fortran briefly.  Played with C++ 
but came away with a really bad impression.

First contact with Ada was circa 1995.  It was a light-bulb moment. 
Programs you can reason about!  Built-in concurrency?  Sign me up!

I'm currently working on a simulator with a large codebase.  Ada, C, 
C++, C#.  The latter is quite nice but the recent thread posted here 
about it's short-comings is spot on.

I'm also hacking on a lisp interpreter in my spare time.  Written in Ada 
naturally.

> Just curious! Any other relevant discussion is welcomed and I would love to chat about it.
>
> Nick
>

-- 
Chris M Moore
sig pending! (since 1995)

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Simon Wright]

Nick Gordon <annihilan@gmail.com> writes:

> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable
> regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do,
> did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C,
> and move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?

Now coming up to 5 years of retirement!

The first computer I ever saw was a PDP-8, in 1967. Programmed in
FORTRAN-II and PAL-III (assembler). Notably a loader system based on
reel-to-reel audio tape, had to fit in 128 words ...

Professionally (all military), Elliot 920 assembler, Ferranti assembler,
CORAL 66, VAX DCL, VAX Fortran 77, some VAX assembler, VAX Pascal,
Smalltalk-V, then Ada!! Since then the usual hodgepodge, C, Make, Imake,
Tcl, bash, PostScript, LaTeX, C++, xslt .. all supporting Ada tooling. I
think there may have been some Perl in there.

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Björn Lundin]

On 2015-11-06 08:46, Nick Gordon wrote:

> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?

I do. My first job used Ada in a Warehouse Management system
and I got to work with it. I still do.
I was employed in 1997

I did learn some Pascal at school,
but the programming experience I had was
summertime jobs in Visual Basic 3/4/5

-- 
Björn

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On Fri, 06 Nov 2015 07:46:50 GMT, Nick Gordon <annihilan@gmail.com>
declaimed the following:

>
>Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?
>

	In one respect, C was the last (compiled) language for me (I include
C++, but know that I'm behind on that too).

	College was (in parallel) FORTRAN-IV, Advanced F-IV, Assembly (XDS
Sigma 6) & COBOL (72/74?), Adv. COBOL, Database (DBTG Network). Pascal
(UCSD), APL, Macro-11 (for the OS course -- can't have students mucking
with the campus mainframe after all). I did a short report on Ada for the
languages survey class in my senior year -- all based upon the SIGPlan
reference/rationale, and a copy of
http://www.amazon.com/Programming-With-Ada-Introduction-Prentice-Hall/dp/0137306970
This was before the NYU Ada/Ed system went live.

	Post-college employment sent me down for a 4-day course in Ada, January
81 -- still no actual programming, just lecture. Mil-Std 1815 had only been
issued a month prior. It was another 24 years before I got to an assignment
using Ada; the program I'd been on was mostly FORTRAN-77 (and didn't fall
under the DOD mandate of "new projects use Ada", since we were
maintaining/upgrading/porting applications that started life in the 70s). 

	Current employment is a mix of Ada (83) (using a cross-compiler hosted
on OpenVMS running via an emulator on a Windows Server), and C. Python for
knock-off processing. Most of my C experience was initially Pro-MC on
TRS-80, and SAS(?)&Aztec C on the Amiga.
-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Nick Gordon]

Jeffrey R. Carter <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org> wrote:
> 
> We're all 25 in our minds.
> 

I have an interest in computing history from when the transistor phase began,
specifically regarding programming languages and their development, so I have
tried over the course of my almost-concluded undergraduate studies to expose
myself to them, but I have to say that my college is getting in my way. I go
to a urban, state university in TN, so it's not entirely concerned with the
caliber of CSci teaching they're imparting on us, unfortunately. Basically,
it's 50% Java-mill/webdev mill, training us to be code monkeys, 40% academic
CSci theory taught with Python, and 10% of all the other stuff.

>
> That's a good starting list.  No functional languages tho.
>

In my own personal time I am very familiar with LISP. I use Emacs and I've
done some tweaks customization to it, so I'm reasonably familiar with ELisp,
and truly the first programming language I ever made useful code in was CLisp,
so I have had a rather bizarre start I think. I don't personally enjoy Java
because of the intense OOP concepts, but I concede they are the predominant
programming/software engineering selling point now, so I know it.

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 11/7/2015 8:44 PM, Nick Gordon wrote:
>Basically,
> it's 50% Java-mill/webdev mill, training us to be code monkeys, 40% academic
> CSci theory taught with Python, and 10% of all the other stuff.
>

When using Python, there are lots of self.x and self.y
and self.* all over the code. This makes the code
very ugly to read, since class own variables must be
references using self., I also found not have a closing
ENDIF and END LOOP, etc.. even if it was just "}" marker,
very confusing and made the code and the algorithms
actually harder to read for me. I kept looking for
a closing "}" and not finding it.

I really do not see what folks see in Python at all. But at
least it is not javascript.  When I did CS at school, we
used Pascal. Those were the good old days.
  
--Nasser

>>
>> That's a good starting list.  No functional languages tho.
>>
>
> In my own personal time I am very familiar with LISP. I use Emacs and I've
> done some tweaks customization to it, so I'm reasonably familiar with ELisp,
> and truly the first programming language I ever made useful code in was CLisp,
> so I have had a rather bizarre start I think. I don't personally enjoy Java
> because of the intense OOP concepts, but I concede they are the predominant
> programming/software engineering selling point now, so I know it.
>

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

On Sun, 8 Nov 2015 00:39:43 -0600, "Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma@12000.org>
declaimed the following:

>
>When using Python, there are lots of self.x and self.y
>and self.* all over the code. This makes the code

	And fully realized C++ tends to use this.*, Visual Basic uses me.*, Ada
doesn't have a "standard" (neither does Python -- "self" is convention,
whereas C++ and VB etc. need it as a keyword as they don't explicitly pass
the object in the parameter list).

	Those are declarative languages where all the attributes have been
pre-defined in the class definition -- one could think the compiler could
figure out what scope applies to a variable reference. Python is fully
dynamic, it must be told when something is a "stack" local (not that the
implementation has to use a stack) that goes away after the method exits,
vs an instance attribute that needs to hang around between invocations, vs
a class-wide attribute...

>very ugly to read, since class own variables must be
>references using self., I also found not have a closing
>ENDIF and END LOOP, etc.. even if it was just "}" marker,
>very confusing and made the code and the algorithms
>actually harder to read for me. I kept looking for
>a closing "}" and not finding it.
>
	Since many of us have been trained to "pretty-print" (ie; use
indentation to indicate block structure), requiring {} begin/end etc. are
superfluous to the design of the code. {} are difficult to see -- and
difficult to match up in some coding styles -- personally the convention of

if (cond) {
	<statements>
} else {
	<statements>
}

is completely confusing... If delimiters are needed, I want them to align
on the same column so I can use a straight-edge to find the blocks...

if (cond)
{
	<statements>
}
else
{
	<statements>
}

	Those languages using {} are even more problematic as the {} are
typically NOT required if <statements> is only a single statement, not a
block... That leads to things like

if (cond)
	<statement>
else
{
	<statements>
}

At least Ada uses self blocking keywords, not line-noise, and the keywords
are not optional.

-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[tmoran]

>
>Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable
>regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do,
>did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C,
>and move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?
>

  Though tecnically retired, I currently use Ada for volunteer work at the
local Community Access TV station.  Seven years ago its funding was
drastically cut so I automated as much as possible, using Ada, to enable
it to continue operating with 1/4 the staff.
  I learned programming with NELIAC, an Algol 58 offshoot, then used
Fortran, COBOL, and Burroughs Algol, then C in the '80s.  Ada looked
interesting and when I saw an ad for a $100 Ada compiler for the PC,
I got it.  Currently I also use Javascript (ugh!, but it runs everywhere),
often in tight communication with an Ada program on a PC.

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

Nick Gordon <annihilan@gmail.com> wrote:

> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable
> regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work?

I use Ada at work.

> If you do, did you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems
> programmer in C, and move over to Ada because of the safety, or
> something like that?

Professionally I've moved from Borland Pascal to Ada as my primary
implementation language, but I've also used C, C++, Java, Python, Oracle
PL/SQL and SPARK where it has been relevant.

I started learning programming with a FORTRAN IV textbook and a FORTRAN
77 compiler (around 1985).  Then I moved to COMAL, BASIC and Borland
Pascal.  I have of course also played around with other programming
languages (Postscript, Erlang, Dart and Parasail among many others).

I stumbled over an Ada book at the library in 1993, and started using
Ada in January 1995, when GNAT and the Ada 95 LRM became available.

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
"Homo sapiens does rational thought like flying squirrels fly."

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Lucretia]

I don't work as a programmer at the moment, I will be looking to change jobs soon.

But, what's required are more people willing to use Ada in new companies and in different areas than the standard military/space/aero (the most used) and embedded (implied by the former, but not so much in the small devices areas). This will then lead to more Ada jobs being available.

Luke.

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Luke A. Guest]

Nick Gordon <annihilan@gmail.com> wrote:

Further to my last response...

> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable
> regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did
> you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and
> move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?

I started with Spectrum BASIC, then C on ST then Amiga. Learnt Ada9X at
Uni. Had to use C++ then C in a games company, burned out, left and due to
the endless hours sitting in a debugger went back to Ada. Used it since for
my own stuff. Really liking Ada 2012 but think 2020 will be better still.

Luke.

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Luke A. Guest]

Luke A. Guest <laguest@archeia.com> wrote:
> Nick Gordon <annihilan@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Further to my last response...
> 
>> Since you guys (and I suppose possibly girls, too) are quite venerable
>> regarding Ada, I wonder how many of you use Ada at work? If you do, did
>> you start with Ada, or did you start as a systems programmer in C, and
>> move over to Ada because of the safety, or something like that?
> 
> I started with Spectrum BASIC, then C on ST then Amiga. Learnt Ada9X at
> Uni. Had to use C++ then C in a games company, burned out, left and due to
> the endless hours sitting in a debugger went back to Ada. Used it since for
> my own stuff. Really liking Ada 2012 but think 2020 will be better still.
> 
> Luke.
> 
> 

I forgot to add m68k Sam on Amiga, Started COBOL at college, got bored and
learnt Pascal instead.

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[gautier_niouzes]

> On the job side, I brought Ada to the job. If you train a few backups (to mitigate the key-person issue) and as long as users are happy (especially to have a reliable and fast in-house software that is not crashing all day), it is possible.

As a complement, a presentation about that software:
http://www.cister.isep.ipp.pt/ae2012/presentations_pdf/wednesday/ua/montmollin.pdf

G.

Re: How many of you have Ada programming careers?

[Nick Gordon]

Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>         Since many of us have been trained to "pretty-print" (ie; use
> indentation to indicate block structure), requiring {} begin/end etc. are
> superfluous to the design of the code. {} are difficult to see -- and
> difficult to match up in some coding styles -- personally the convention of
> 
> if (cond) {
>         <statements>
> } else {
>         <statements>
> }
> 
> is completely confusing... If delimiters are needed, I want them to align
> on the same column so I can use a straight-edge to find the blocks...
> 
> if (cond)
> {
>         <statements>
> }
> else
> {
>         <statements>
> }
> 
>         Those languages using {} are even more problematic as the {} are
> typically NOT required if <statements> is only a single statement, not a
> block... That leads to things like
> 
> if (cond)
>         <statement>
> else
> {
>         <statements>
> }
> 
> At least Ada uses self blocking keywords, not line-noise, and the keywords
> are not optional.
> 

You know before now I've exclusively written it in the:
if () {
} else }
}

style, because I felt that made more readable code chunks, but your explanation
of why:
if ()
{
}
else
{
}

is better suddenly makes a *lot* more sense. I think we can both agree though
that people that do this:
if () { }
else { }

are terrible humans.

Nick