Ada has carved itself a niche in the safety-critical/embedded/real-time areas. It is the language of choice in application areas where reliability, long term maintainability and similar features are very important. Typical of such areas are defence embedded systems, railway signalling, air traffic control and so on.
Note especially that SPARK which is very successful for critical systems is based on Ada. No other language really has a suitable underlying structure.
This latest edition of the highly successful 'Programming in Ada' has been fully updated to the latest version of the language: Ada 2005.
Programming in Ada 2005
John Barnes
“This book is going to be a tremendous resource that will prove useful for many years. It combines a broad description of the entire language, including its predefined libraries, with an in-depth study of a number of areas of particular interest such as object-oriented techniques or concurrency. It includes extensive examples showing how the numerous features of Ada can be made to work together in practical situations.”
~ Pascal Leroy, Chairman of the Ada Rapporteur Group.
Programming in Ada 2005 is the definitive tutorial and reference for a ground-breaking new version of Ada (Ada 2005), a significant revision of the language of choice for applications where safety, security and reliability are paramount.
The major changes from Ada 95 are:
Ø A new OO model to incorporate Java-style multiple inheritance and more rigorous error analysis prior to execution;
Ø Synchronized interfaces to unify the OO and concurrent domains – a radical innovation in language design;
Ø More flexible but totally safe manipulation of pointers;
Ø An improved structure enabling large programs to be decomposed more easily;
Ø Many extensions to the Real-Time facilities, keeping Ada ahead of other languages for embedded applications;
Ø Improved interfacing to other systems and languages;
Ø Enhanced standard library support including containers.
John Barnes was a key member of the original Ada design team and has been a pivotal figure in its evolution ever since. Over 150,000 students and software engineers have learned Ada from previous editions – widely praised for their witty and urbane style. He is also the author of High Integrity Software: The SPARK Approach to Safety and Security.
