Also, I remember hearing/reading somewhere, possible in a class I took on compilers, that the Ada language was so complex that it very likely would never have completed development if it were not backed by the government.
Ada has seen 2 major updates to its standard -- the Ada 2005 and Ada 2012 standards.
> Also, I remember hearing/reading somewhere, possible in a class I took on compilers, that the Ada language was so complex that it very likely would never have completed development if it were not backed by the government.
There's a lot of weird myths floating about about the complexity of Ada. By the standards of the early 80s its certainly somewhat more complex than, say, C or Pascal, but it's orders of magnitude less complex than the C++ standard, and certainly easier to parse and compile. By modern standards its certainly a simpler language than Java.
I think it is helped by having a FOSS reference compiler (GNAT) and the required increase in terms of secure software quality, specially when human lives are at risk.
It should be noted that the free version of said compiler may only be used to produce software released under a GPL compatible license. This is unusually restrictive and rules out Ada for most people right away.
It is either Free Software only or an expensive commercial subscription to AdaCore's services. I mean the "expensive" is a guess, but given that they do not list prices on their website but ask you to contact their sales department, we can assume they are far from cheap.
In a world where you can develop commercial, closed source software in all popular languages using free tools this seems anachronistic. I understand that AdaCore needs to make money somehow and this is probably the best business strategy for them, but still, it seriously limits the appeal. The appeal of Ada in general too, because it seems there is no (truly) free, modern Ada compiler.
Interestingly enough the situation seems to be similar for most of the failed languages of days gone by. If you look for implementations you only find DOS era stuff and X thousand dollar "solutions" which milk the enterprise/government legacy code market.
No. No. No.
GCC GNAT is under GPL 3 with GCC runtime library exception, the same license as the rest of GCC.
Before GPL 3 it was licensed under GMGPL -- GNAT Modified GPL, which was very similar to the the current license as the "runtime library exception" is intended to unify similar exceptions from several GCC compilers, for example if you're using C++11 on GCC you are bound by the exact same license.
I'm sorry if i'm not as nice as I could be. Every time Ada is mentioned someone chimes in with mythical license woes. You're doing harm by spreading misinformation. This myth needs to die.
Blame AdaCore. I based my statement on the information on their website [1]. They certainly try to convince people that you have to buy GNAT Pro if you want to build non-GPL compatible software.
Based on the other comments here, it seems it is actually possible to use GNAT, with an alternative FSF runtime, to build non-GPL compatible software without a license. Great, however AdaCore certainly likes to keep quiet about that possibility (for understandable reasons). Also as a potential user I would be worried about the quality of said runtime, given that it probably has no serious users and very little manpower behind it.
[1] http://libre.adacore.com/tools/gnat-gpl-edition/faq/#licensi...
E.g. I have every reason to believe you and the others commenting on this, but I'm going to have to confirm for myself that this is correct.
> The GMGPL license in either GNAT Pro runtime or GNAT-FSF runtime permits software that is licensed under a license that is incompatible with the GPL to be linked with the output of Ada standard generic libraries that are supplied with GNAT without breaching the license agreement.
If you use the version of GNAT provided as part of GCC from GNU (which is a year or so behind), or the paid-for version of GNAT from AdaCore, you can distribute your program without distributing the source. If, however, you use the GPLed version of GNAT from AdaCore, your own code has to be distributed under something compatible with the GPL.
The Wikipedia article could do with a cleanup, really.
There are required certification processes in place that most FOSS will never pay.
For example, if you go the C or C++ route, the code has to be validated against the MISRA standard, with specific tooling.
This is another game league than the app of the day thing.
Not long ago HN discussed a very interesting project based on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656300 ... and I didn't realize GNAT was so constrained.
While composing this I noticed other comments trying to clarify the situation, I'll have to check for myself, which is not a good way to "do business".
Nowadays, Ada is not more complex than most mainstream languages, specially when you take in consideration all the undefined and unspecified cases in C and C++.
To a certain extent, all the older languages still in used nowadays were also backed by the goverment.
Funny anecdote, One of the first IDEs for strong typed languages was targeted at Ada, the R1000 computer system, created by a young company named "Rational Software".
That is an odd way of putting it. Aren't undefined/unspecified behaviors allowed to be implemented in whatever is simplest for the compiler if it prefers? Sure many modern compilers leverage them to expand the power of their optimization engines, but that isn't really a language difficulty case.