Intellectual Ammunition Department

Ada in Industry

FACTS and MYTHS

Why use Ada?
Ada is the language of choice where software engineering, reliability, cost-effectiveness, large-scale development, and reuse matter.

Peter Coffee--of PC Week--was an invited speaker during the closing session of TRI-Ada'95; he clearly values Ada. See his Nov. 27 PC Week column "Soft Talk", near the end (four last paragraphs): hard facts confirming what we informally knew and said for years, i.e. that Ada is more cost-effective and more reliable than C. (The unnamed company is Verdix, now part of Rational; the study was described in another TRI-Ada'95 talk; the paper is now available online, see "Comparing Development Costs of C and Ada" by S.F. Zeigler.) The next thing that needs to be widely published is that most people who claim to work with C++ are merely feeding C code to their C++ compilers.

Ada is the industrial-strength programming language for real-time systems and DSP programming. Read about the following experiences: Ada Exceeds Performance Specifications, Ada Beats C, and Ada Rivals Assembly.

What is Ada used for?
Ada is currently used for applications in such domains as: financial services, avionics, aeronautics, air traffic control, telecommunications, medical devices, power plants, railroads, astrophysics, satellites, and defense, to name a few.

There is a series of monographs on commercial applications using Ada around the world.

What is Ada good for?
Ada can help you to succeed in your software development. Read how it has repeatedly proved its value in a selection of commercial Ada success stories (note: this material is somewhat dated, as it was written several years ago).

Where is Ada used?
SIGAda's Commercial Ada Users Working Group has produced a survey of commercial applications written in Ada (140K report, dated June 1993).

The AdaIC has also compiled a (non-exhaustive) list of projects (industry, defense, international).


Ada Myths
"Ada is only used by defense industries."
Wrong! Have you read the commercial success stories mentioned above? Have you checked the lists of Ada applications and projects?

Page last modified: 1998-12-20