Languages

Ada

Structured Language

Citation Formats

General Reference

Computing Atlas. "Ada." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/ada.

APA Style

Computing Atlas. (n.d.). Ada. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/ada

BibTeX

@misc{computingatlas-ada,
  author = {Computing Atlas},
  title = {Ada},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/languages/ada},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative and object-oriented programming language, inspired by Pascal, that was commissioned by the United States Department of Defense to replace the more than four hundred languages then used across its systems. First released in 1980 and named after Ada Lovelace, it places an unusual emphasis on catching errors at compile time rather than at run time.

Facts

First Released

1980 1

Paradigm

Structured, imperative, object-oriented, concurrent, generic and distributed; strongly and statically typed. 1

Significance

Commissioned to replace the hundreds of languages then in use across United States defense systems and named for Ada Lovelace, regarded as the first computer programmer; its compile-time safety emphasis influenced later language design. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections