[To obtain the latest versions of the documents in this section, see the document home sites index.]
Ada is a general-purpose programming language which was originally commissioned by the U.S. Department of Defense in the late 1970s. The language definition was finally approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1983 and also by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1987. The rules of these organisations require that standards be reviewed and resubmitted for validation every ten years, so in the late 1980s the revision effort began and a new version of Ada began to take shape. The new version of the language was originally referred to as Ada 9X, since it would be approved some time during the 1990s, and the original version of the language became known as Ada 83 (since it was originally approved in 1983). The standardisation of Ada 9X was finally completed in early 1995, so the official title of the language is now Ada 95.
![]() | Versions of GNAT, a free Ada 95 compiler, for DOS/Windows 3.x and for Windows 95/NT |
![]() | A selection of GNAT development environments for DOS, Windows 3.x and Windows 95/NT |
![]() | An Ada-aware text editor |
![]() | Lovelace, an excellent on-line Ada tutorial by David Wheeler |
![]() | The Coronado Ada 95 tutorial. This is a shareware tutorial from Coronado Enterprises, so if you find it useful you should pay the author for his trouble. The examples it refers to need to be installed separately. |
![]() | The comp.lang.ada FAQ from the newsgroup comp.lang.ada |
![]() | The Learning Ada FAQ from the newsgroup comp.lang.ada |
![]() | The Ada Programming FAQ from the newsgroup comp.lang.ada |
![]() | The Object-Oriented FAQ |
![]() | The DJGPP FAQ, all about the DJGPP compiler |
![]() | The Language Reference Manual (LRM), which is the official definition of the language |
![]() | The Ada 95 Rationale, which gives explanations of major language features and changes from Ada 83 |
![]() | The Ada 95 Style Guide, which gives a set of guidelines for writing high-quality Ada programs |
![]() | Some Ada packages |
![]() | Examples from the book Ada 95: The Craft of Object-Oriented Programming by John English |
![]() | Examples from the book Object-Oriented Software in Ada 95 by my colleague Mike Smith |
![]() | The Ada Home, the premier Ada website with links to a huge range of Ada resources |
![]() | The Public Ada Library, an FTP archive of Ada software and other material |
![]() | The Ada Information Clearinghouse, the primary archive for Ada documentation |
![]() | ACM SIGAda, the Association for Computing Machinery's Ada special interest group |
![]() | Ada-UK, the British Ada special interest group |
![]() | Ada Core Technologies, the home site for GNAT. The GNAT distributions are also mirrored at the University of Brighton. |
![]() | Learn Ada on the Web, Fintan Culwin's online tutorial at South Bank University in London |
![]() | Ada links at Yahoo (or at Yahoo UK) |
![]() | Cetus Object-Orientation Links |
![]() | The OO SoapBox |
![]() | The newsgroup comp.lang.ada |