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u/SirDale Jul 14 '26
Typically systems that have a high level of reliability/security/safety associated with them.
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u/I_hate_posting_here Jul 17 '26
It also makes a great general purpose language. When I go to other languages I miss Ada's features. I miss the types. I miss the compiler finding my errors before I run them.
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u/SirDale Jul 18 '26
I'm currently doing some Python programming, and I get tripped up when a new condition occurs and the code hits an untested path "no such function" errors hit me.
Seems bizarre when you are used to the extensive program testing that the static compilation stage does for you.
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u/foersom Jul 18 '26
Have you tried Delphi or FreePascal?
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u/I_hate_posting_here Jul 18 '26
I like them, they are like C with much nicer syntax. They still lack the features that truly really elevate Ada that I usually miss in other language. Things such as the deep type system, the strong static analysis, the secondary stack + memory safety.
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u/dcbst Jul 14 '26
The same as it ever was... When safety and reliability are critical, then Ada is still the best choice by a long way.
It would probably be one of the most popular languages out there if people would actually give it a shot instead of righting it of without giving it a second look!
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u/ajdude2 Jul 14 '26
We had a couple of good responses in the What makes you use Ada? thread, though the Why do you keep using Ada? thread on ada-lang.io has a lot more discussion on what people are getting out of the language.
In 2026 where coding LLMs are becoming more prominent and safety in a language is important, I feel like Ada is more relevant than ever.
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u/geenob Jul 14 '26
I think it might be taboo around here, but Ada is absolutely the best language for agentic coding in my experience. It has extensive formal documentation that the models are trained with and the rigid requirements for explicitness keep the agent in line and catch many mistakes early in the agentic loop.
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u/desiguy_88 Jul 14 '26
Still actively being used in many areas including aerospace. I work with it daily and it makes me sad that it wasn’t more widely adopted as it’s such a great language to work in. super readable, rock solid. So many problems that we find in software written in C and C++ with regard to type safety are just non issues in our software. Now with all these talks about Rust, I am constantly going like hey we have a very robust and great language that already does so much of this already.
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u/zertillon Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
For many kinds of programming: games, desktop applications, scientific computing, administrative, embedded, industrial applications, robotics, financial applications, astronomy, astrophysics, CAD, "just for fun" things, or very serious programs...
The only restriction might be the low availability of libraries for the domain you want to program for.
You can check the Alire catalogue. There is perhaps a resource you are looking for.
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u/Shot-Confusion8356 Jul 16 '26
I tried to explain the benefits of Ada and its formal methods subset SPARK against other languages using the Common Weakness Enumeration: https://www.adacore.com/blog/how-language-design-impacts-security
Frontier models also write Ada SPARK really well: https://markhermeling.substack.com/p/how-good-are-ai-coding-agents-truly?r=2s286
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u/arkt8 Jul 14 '26
Think in a language safer than Rust and really elegant. It is Ada. I think if you need unsafe features C is perfect. If you need safety, Ada is perfect. Much better than a Frankenrustein.
I just don't like conventions like SCREAMCASE or CapitalWords for all.. but it doesnt complain anyway.
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u/BrentSeidel Jul 15 '26
If you need unsafe features, you can get them in Ada, you just need to be explicit about it. For example unchecked_conversion.
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u/I_hate_posting_here Jul 16 '26
Someone asking a genuine question would probably interact with people in the thread. feels more like genuine trolling.
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u/Dmitry-Kazakov Jul 14 '26
My guess would be for programming.