Ada is the most commonly used language in U.S. weapons systems modernization. In 1974 the US Department of Defense realized that it was spending too much time, effort and money developing and maintaining defense system components.

At this time over 450 different languages or language extensions were in use. Integration of new components was hard, reliability was low. They realized they needed to sort that mess, so they made a list of requirements for the language they needed. This list, called Strawman, was extended by the Army and Navy, and Air force, and sequentially renamed Woodenman and Tinman.

No language was found to fit the tinman requirement (not even Eiffel, Pascal, C or C++) so instead of building one by committee (like C++) they decided to set a competition to build a new Programming Language.

The winner would be decided by extensive review, by outside parties in Academia and Industry. The specifications to apply for the language were called Ironman. A final match between the two best languages was settled by the requirements of the Steelman list.

The winning team was a French team headed by Dr. Jean Ichbiah, now a member of the french Legion of Honor. Further development was incorporated to the language refining from the top challengers.

They decided to name it Ada, after the first programmer in history: Lady Ada Augusta Byron Lovelace.

Ada was originally standardized by ANSI in 1983 (ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A). A year after that, it became an ISO standard.

All compilers must pass a compliance test, gaining the Validated Ada rank, in order to be legally Ada compilers. These certificates have an expiration date, so all compilers in the market must adjust to the standard. This ensures all Ada code can be compiled in any system.

A Reference Manual was published to extensively describe the language in completion. It's a nice read if you like getting headaches (but the examples are so useful!). I find strange than the language is easier to understand than the notes on the language 🤔

The 1995 revision of Ada (Ada 95) incorporated all Object Orientation Features that were rising at the time.

Another minor update was done in 2005.

2012's revision incorporated Contract Oriented programming to the language.

Time will tell what comes next. Ada 202x is just around the corner!

Ada is probably the most systematically developed programming language.

At the time of writing, Ada has found a loyal following in many sectors, and adept fans such as myself (here writing all this for free...) due to a constant satisfaction and reliance.

Ada turns itself invisible so you can focus on your actual work. That's what a good tool should do.

Major Ada niches include aerospace and safety-critical systems.

Telecommunications and Linux Systems have a significant representation.