Issues in Ada's future sponsored by ACM/adatc (Panel Discussion)
Sabina H. Saib · 1982
The Ada programming language has gone public. The Department of Defense originally sponsored the effort in order to develop a high level language which could be used in real time computer systems. Such systems are written in assembly language or in obscure languages such as CMS (Navy), JOVIAL (Air Force), and TACPOL (Army). Each of the high level languages in current use by the services has deficiencies which require the use of assembly language in almost all applications. In fact, most of the real time applications which are written supposedly in a high level language are written actually in assembly language because the compilers accept assembly language statements. This sad state of affairs has resulted because none of the current language can handle all of the requirements of real time applications. For example, there exist at least four dialects of JOVIAL (J2, J3, J3B, and J73) none of which have a basic input or output capability.