S. TUCKER TAFT REVIEWS THE Ada 95 PHILOSOPHY

The latest issue of Journal of Object-Oriented Programming features an article by S. Tucker Taft entitled “The Ada 95 Philosophy.” Taft, technical lead of the Ada 95 design team, offers a quick overview of Ada’s background and evolution then proceeds to the Ada 95 philosophy.

Taft emphasized three important philosophical principles that emerged from the team’s design efforts:

  1. Focus on providing “building blocks” for programmers, rather than ready-made solutions. By focusing on a small number of high-leverage enhancements to the language, programmers are able to solve problems more effectively and efficiently.
  2. Agree that Ada is first and foremost a systems implementation language. Ada is a “do what I say” language - the programmer is in complete control.
  3. The basic constructs of the language should be inherently safe.

“In addition to all of these serious-sounding, high-minded philosophical principles,” he said, “there was an overriding goal of making the language flexible, powerful and fun to use. Early users of Ada 95 have provided welcome confirmation that we accomplished this latter goal, while remaining faithful to our more high-minded principles.”

Source:
Taft, S. Tucker. “The Ada 95 Philosophy.” Journal of Object

Oriented Programming. June 1995: 6,8.

S. Tucker Taft can be reached at:
Intermetrics, Inc.
733 Concord Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138
or via
E-mail: stt@inmet.com.

DEPT. OF ARMY, AIR FORCE AND NAVY EDUCATORS VISIT THE AJPO

Captain Dave Cooke (USAFA), Major Drew Hamilton (US Army) and DPC Ann Tweedy (DoN) visited the AJPO this past week to update their existing Ada 95 courses.

The Air Force Academy is converting its Department of Astronautics from Fortran to Ada. Westpoint is converting its upper division courses to Ada and the Navy/Marines are upgrading their existing courses to Ada 95 as well.

Source: Ada Joint Program Office

NEW Ada 95 DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT AVAILABLE

The Developer Magic ProDev Ada 95 has just been introduced by Silicon Graphics. The Silicon Graphics Ada 95 development environment integrates the flexibility of a true object-oriented programming language and the speed of a next-generation development tool set with multi-processor power, an open architecture and the modular structure of Ada 95.

For more information about the Silicon Graphics Developer Magic ProDev Ada 95, contact:

Silicon Graphics Computer Systems
U.S.: 800/800-7441
World Wide Web server: URL:http://www.sgi.co./

Corporate Office:
2011 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA 94043
Phone: 415/960-1980

Source: Silicon Graphics data sheet.