Re:Ask HN: Why isn't ADA more popular?
by Jtsummers on Sunday March 28, 2021 @11:52AM
(#26611335)
The Ada mandate was from 1991-1997. It is still used on some newer systems developed after that, but largely the embedded real-time systems Ada was (particularly) meant to target have been developed in C, C++, and Fortran for DoD. These days, Ada is probably as common as Fortran and largely present more for historical reasons than deliberate ones with C and C++ being the dominant languages for DoD systems.
For non-real-time systems, for example IT system, the DoD has a preference for buying COTS (commercial off the shelf) software which will be whatever industry was using when that particular system was developed (so a variety of languages).
That said, the 787 (which I worked on briefly now over a decade ago) software was decidedly non-military and developers for the software were given a choice between C and Ada for their subsystems. It's out there in a variety of critical applications still, though it seems more popular in Europe than the US.
For non-real-time systems, for example IT system, the DoD has a preference for buying COTS (commercial off the shelf) software which will be whatever industry was using when that particular system was developed (so a variety of languages).
That said, the 787 (which I worked on briefly now over a decade ago) software was decidedly non-military and developers for the software were given a choice between C and Ada for their subsystems. It's out there in a variety of critical applications still, though it seems more popular in Europe than the US.