Ada at online FOSDEM 2021 - 6-7 February 2021

Ada at online FOSDEM 2021 - 6-7 February 2021

[Dirk Craeynest]

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Hello everyone,

Some of you might be interested in the information below...

Dirk Craeynest
Dirk.Craeynest@cs.kuleuven.be (for Ada-Belgium/Ada-Europe/SIGAda/WG9)

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Ada at online FOSDEM 2021 - 6-7 February 2021

#AdaFOSDEM #AdaProgramming #FOSDEM2020

http://www.cs.kuleuven.be/~dirk/ada-belgium/events/21/210206-fosdem.html

"FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas
and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and
open source software from all over the world gather at the event in
Brussels. In 2021, they will gather online. No registration necessary."
{quoted from https://fosdem.org/2021}

Although, as announced previously, there is no Ada Developer Room at
FOSDEM 2021, we are pleased there will be some Ada-related content
after all.

In short:

* AdaCore announced on Twitter: "Like previous years, we will
  participate in FOSDEM on Feb 6-7, 2021. AdaCore engineers will give
  two talks in the Safety and Open Source devroom! Check out the full
  blog post for more details.
* Egil Høvik pointed out on LinkedIn: "Someone did Advent of Code
  with a new language each day, one of which is Ada."
* There's a talk on Ada Lovelace and the first computer program.

The information in this message is also available at the URL above.

The dedicated FOSDEM pages mentioned there include links to the
live stream and chat rooms for each presentation at the time of
the event. Also useful is the link to the latest FOSDEM 2021 news,
including info on attending a talk at FOSDEM 2021.

More about the presentations:

* "Adding contracts to the GCC GNAT Ada standard libraries" - to
  strengthen analysis provided by formal verification tools
  by Joffrey Huguet
  Saturday 6 February 2021 11:00-11:30
  Safety and Open Source devroom

  The guarantees provided by SPARK, an open-source formal proof tool
  for Ada, and its analysis are only as strong as the properties that
  were initially specified. In particular, use of third-party
  libraries or the Ada standard libraries may weaken the analysis, if
  the relevant properties of the library API are not specified. We
  progressively added contracts to some of the GCC GNAT Ada standard
  libraries to enable users to prove additional properties when using
  them, thus increasing the safety of their programs. In this talk, I
  will present the different levels of insurance those contracts can
  provide, from preventing some run-time errors to occur, to
  describing entirely their action.

* "Proving heap-manipulating programs with SPARK" - The SPARK
  open-source proof tool for Ada now supports verifying pointer-based
  algorithms thanks to an ownership policy inspired by Rust
  by Claire Dross
  Saturday 6 February 2021 13:30-14:30
  Safety and Open Source devroom

  SPARK is an open-source tool for formal verification of the Ada
  language. Last year, support for pointers, aka access types, was
  added to SPARK. It works by enforcing an ownership policy somewhat
  similar to the one used in Rust. It ensures in particular that
  there is only one owner of a given data at all time, which can be
  used to modify it. One of the most complex parts for verification
  is the notion of borrowing. It allows to transfer the ownership of
  a part of a data-structure, but only for a limited time. Afterward
  ownership returns to the initial owner. In this talk, I will
  explain how this can be achieved and, in particular, how we can
  describe in the specification the relation between the borrower and
  the borrowed object at all times.

* "25 languages in 25 days"
  by Peter Eisentraut
  Sunday 7 February 2021 13:00-13:20
  Lightning Talks

  I did the Advent of Code 2020 with a different programming language
  every day, so instead of having to visit 25 developer rooms, you
  can just listen to me for my lightning summary.

* "Ada Lovelace and The Very First Computer Program"
  by Steven Goodwin
  Sunday 7 February 2021 17:00-17:40
  Retrocomputing devroom

  We all know that Ada Lovelace is credited as the first computer
  programmer. But what did she write? What did it do? And how does it
  work? We look at the program, its function, and break it down
  line-by-line so you can understand the origins of our entire
  industry. After all, it doesn't get any more retro than this! In
  this talk, developer, geek, and digital archaeologist, Steven
  Goodwin, breaks down the very first program ever written to explain
  what it does and how it works. He goes on to simulate it within a
  JavaScript version of Babbage's analytical engine, rewriting it
  piece-by-piece until it looks like modern code, and thereby
  demonstrate what features of current languages we now all take for
  granted. He finishes up with a discussion on the controversy
  surrounding her involvement in computing, aiming to answer the
  question once and for all - "Was she really the first programmer?"

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