Introduction
                      to Ada 95

                      Including Ada 83



                      General Information


                      Course Outline


                      Hands-on Problems

Why Ada ?

  The Ada language was engineered to
  promote quality software.

  The compiler checks almost every
  thing that is checkable at compile
  time.

  The library and linker will not
  allow a compilation unit that has
  errors. There are checks that ensure
  all compilations are up to date.

  Ada came with a philosophy of
  good software engineering rather
  than a philosophy of hacking.

Expect Errors

  A major TRW study found:

  79% of errors in Requirements and Specifications

  21% of errors in Programming

  During integration and test you will find
  the requirement and specification errors.

  Only 1/5 of the errors will be in programming.
  Most of these will be in logic or
  uninitialized variables.

  e.g.   if X > GLOBAL then   "<" or ">="

         if WHATEVER then
            A := B;
         else
            B := 1;
         end if;

Impact of Ada

  Fortran 90 adopted Ada overloading

  C++ uses many concepts from Ada:
  encapsulation, data abstraction,
  generics as templates,
  exceptions and overloading

  VHDL, VISIC Hardware Description 
  Language is based on Ada

  The languages that will be most
  used for very large programs in the
  next decade will be Ada and C++

  Java, XML, and many other languages
  will be used in various domains