Hacker News Reader

> ADA has proper arrays, with bounds checks.

Not only that, but you can also opt out at compile-time if you need, for performance reasons.

You also have (optional) runtime bound-checking for scalar values (aka "integers"), and you can even specify the bounds yourself (like "A number between 3 and 17").

View on HN

I know, there are many great features in ADA, I just tried to first list those that seemed the most relevant to me in an embedded context.

Proper bounds checked arrays, possible to opt out, integers with bounds: Turbo Pascal had that too.

Ada has that and many more features that help in creating great embedded software.

Key word in that sentence: had. I picked up Ada essentially because it seemed to me a more actively maintained Pascal. (I've since learned that Free Pascal/Lazarus might not be as dead as it first appeared.)

How are compile times in ada? (Best thing about pascal/delphi)

They are typically pretty good; the design helps the compiler to not have to re-compile everything any time something is changed, so most of your variance is going to boil down to "how much did you change."

That said, Delphi is blazing fast so Ada will seem a bit slower, typically… but [IME] it's generally not going to be something as slow as a lot of C++ programs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com