Ada

Ada, city, United States

Ada (ā`ə), city (1990 pop. 15,820), seat of Pontotoc co., S central Okla.; inc. 1904. It is a large cattle market and the center of a rich oil and ranch area. The city is also noted for horsebreeding, especially of quarter horses. East Central State Univ. and the Sciences and Natural Resources Center of Oklahoma are there, and the Robert S. Kerr Water Research Center (a federal laboratory) is just to the south.

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Ada, computer language

Ada: see programming language.

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Ada

High-level computer programming language whose development was initiated in 1975 by the U.S. Dept. of Defense and standardized in 1983. Ada (named for the countess of Lovelace) was intended to be a common language for use on the department's computers, which were produced by many different manufacturers. It is similar to Pascal but contains many additional features convenient for the development of large-scale, multiplatform programs. The 1995 revision, called Ada 95, supports object-oriented programming.

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Ada

A high-level programming language developed by the U.S. Department of Defense along with the European Economic Community and many other organizations. It was designed for embedded applications and process control but is also used for logistics applications. Ada is a Pascal-based language that is very comprehensive.

Ada was named after Augusta Ada Byron (1815-1852), Countess of Lovelace and daughter of the poet Lord Byron and mathematician Annabella Milbanke Byron. Ada also became a mathematician and was the colleague of Charles Babbage, who was developing his Analytical Engine. Some of her programming notes for the machine have survived, giving her the distinction of being the first documented programmer in the world.

The following Ada program converts Fahrenheit to Celsius:

 with Text_IO;
 procedure Convert is
 package Int_IO is new Text_IO.Integer_IO(Integer);
 Fahrenheit : Integer;
 begin
  Text_IO.Put_Line("Enter Fahrenheit");
  Int_IO.Get(Fahrenheit);
  Text_IO.Put("Celsius is ");
  Int_IO.Put((Fahrenheit-32) * 5 / 9);
  Text_IO.New_Line;
 end Convert;

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Ada

a high-level computer programming language designed for dealing with real-time processing problems: used for military and other systems

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(language)

Ada - (After Ada Lovelace) A Pascal-descended language, designed by Jean Ichbiah's team at CII Honeywell in 1979, made mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the Pentagon. The original language was standardised as "Ada 83", the latest is "Ada 95". Ada is a large, complex, block-structured language aimed primarily at embedded applications. It has facilities for real-time response, concurrency, hardware access and reliable run-time error handling. In support of large-scale software engineering, it emphasises strong typing, data abstraction and encapsulation. The type system uses name equivalence and includes both subtypes and derived types. Both fixed and floating-point numerical types are supported. Control flow is fully bracketed: if-then-elsif-end if, case-is-when-end case, loop-exit-end loop, goto. Subprogram parameters are in, out, or inout. Variables imported from other packages may be hidden or directly visible. Operators may be overloaded and so may enumeration literals. There are user-defined exceptions and exception handlers. An Ada program consists of a set of packages encapsulating data objects and their related operations. A package has a separately compilable body and interface. Ada permits generic packages and subroutines, possibly parametrised. Ada support single inheritance, using "tagged types" which are types that can be extended via inheritance. Ada programming places a heavy emphasis on multitasking. Tasks are synchronised by the rendezvous, in which a task waits for one of its subroutines to be executed by another. The conditional entry makes it possible for a task to test whether an entry is ready. The selective wait waits for either of two entries or waits for a limited time. Ada is often criticised, especially for its size and complexity, and this is attributed to its having been designed by committee. In fact, both Ada 83 and Ada 95 were designed by small design teams to be internally consistent and tightly integrated. By contrast, two possible competitors, Fortran 90 and C++ have both become products designed by large and disparate volunteer committees. See also Ada/Ed, Toy/Ada. Home of the Brave Ada Programmers. Ada FAQs (hypertext), text only. http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/languages/ada/, ftp://ajpo.sei.cmu.edu/, ftp://stars.rosslyn.unisys.com/pub/ACE_8.0. E-mail: <adainfo@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu>. Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.lang.ada. An Ada grammar including a lex scanner and yacc parser is available. E-mail: <masticol@dumas.rutgers.edu>. Another yacc grammar and parser for Ada by Herman Fischer. An LR parser and pretty-printer for Ada from NASA is available from the Ada Software Repository. Adamakegen generates makefiles for Ada programs. ["Reference Manual for the Ada Programming Language", ANSI/MIL STD 1815A, US DoD (Jan 1983)]. Earlier draft versions appeared in July 1980 and July 1982. ISO 1987.