Motivations
This site aims to preserve heritage elements of the original Ada® language (now called Ada 83).
Ada 83 is a computer programming language set in its standard in 1983, and for which a fairly formidable design effort was deployed over nearly a decade, following which the language in its original form was used in large-scale projects over the following decade. Then revisions of the language were made which certainly increased its possibilities, but at the heavy cost of rather considerable complications on an originally quite sophisticated base which proved sufficient for many applications.
At the time of its availability, Ada 83 was considered a “big” language, the compilation of which put contemporary machines to the test. On current systems in these 2020s, the compilation of Ada 83 has become easy.
The extraordinary qualities of this language are, despite its age, still of particular interest from the point of view of software engineering. Since the operating principles of digital machines have not changed so much, the Ada 83 language is still perfectly usable and capable of providing services. Despite Ada 83's seemingly old age it is predated by other languages like C[1] and [2] Pascal that are still in use today.
At the very least, it is essential to preserve Ada 83, its resources, its conceptual atmosphere, these works of human genius in the field of digital information processing.
This site is thus a place dedicated to the ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A-1983 version of the Ada computer programming language ; version known today as Ada 83 to distinguish it from later versions (Ada 95, Ada 2005, Ada 2012, Ada 2022).
The specification of Ada 83 (the Ada Language Reference Manual) is close to 170 paper sheets long (around 270 pages of language definition proper), which makes it integrally accessible to an individual reader.
The Ada language still exists but evolved so much that we wanted to preserve elements of the original version of the language. Ada 83 is a peculiar programming universe that really deserves preservation, both for computer history purpose and as an example of a specially well designed tool for software reliability, readability, maintenance. We believe that Ada 83 is still useful forty years later.
Purpose
This site aims at gathering :
- history facts
- tools
- documentation
- examples written in Ada 83.
The interest is also about Ada 83 language machines like the Rational R1000 and the iAPX 432.
Participate
Feel free to participate to the elaboration of Ada 83 Memory whether you are a veteran of the 1980ies or a programming history enthusiast. Nonetheless be aware that only Ada 83 is of interest here, no Ada 95 or later version will be considered (or only marginally if it serves an analytical purpose).
You can request your account here