> The biggest problem of Ada IMO is that it was always supposed to be about safety, but it never addressed the most common source of bugs: pointer safety. Not even with SPARK. It's like discussing about how can you fortify the door in a house with three walls. I suspect they planned to solve it like everyone else (with tracing GC), but that never materialised (because most Ads users don't want tracing GC) thus was always kinda weird “safe” language which doesn't tackle the most common source of bugs.
> Finally, in year 2020, it solved that problem. By picking ideas from Rust, of course.
> But by that time momentum was lost and it would be very hard to overcome that “safe language without safety” stigma.
Re:Rust 2024 the Year of Everywhere?
by fulafel on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:06AM
(#32952126)
Yep. Borrowing ideas is good and completely ok, as Rust also does copiously, this is how our languages improve. But of course Ada has a lot of other safety features that Rust does not.
https://lwn.net/Articles/908057/
> The biggest problem of Ada IMO is that it was always supposed to be about safety, but it never addressed the most common source of bugs: pointer safety. Not even with SPARK. It's like discussing about how can you fortify the door in a house with three walls. I suspect they planned to solve it like everyone else (with tracing GC), but that never materialised (because most Ads users don't want tracing GC) thus was always kinda weird “safe” language which doesn't tackle the most common source of bugs.
> Finally, in year 2020, it solved that problem. By picking ideas from Rust, of course.
> But by that time momentum was lost and it would be very hard to overcome that “safe language without safety” stigma.