What Was Your First Programming Language?

[Bill (Smithville NJ)]

(07-07-2015 03:35 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  Ada was chosen by IBM in 1988 as the programming language to be used in their development of a new air traffic control system in the US. At that time, many people believed Ada would become the new "standard" programming language, at least for US defense work. It never happened. It was a nightmare. I can't recall all of the specific things that went wrong with the project, but the FAA poured billions of dollars into it and in the end had nothing to show for it. I suspect changing requirements were more at fault than Ada, but the project was ultimately cancelled.

Hi Don,

I remember you talking about your experience with this before.

What's interesting is that ADA, or a subset of it, is now being considered as a solution to more secure systems on mobile platforms. See following article:

An unexpected source of mobile security: Ada

I love the following quote:

Quote:What made Ada difficult also made it secure and reliable—in simplified programing terms, it was hard to get code past Ada’s exacting compiler, but once you did, it was extremely reliable and resistant to many types of attacks.

Bill
Smithville, NJ