82 Chapter 2 Evolution of the Major Programming Languages
The Strawman document was followed by Woodenman (Department of
Defense, 1975b) in August 1975, Tinman (Department of Defense, 1976) in
January 1976, Ironman (Department of Defense, 1977) in January 1977, and
finally Steelman (Department of Defense, 1978) in June 1978.
After a tedious process, the many submitted proposals for the language
were narrowed down to four finalists, all of which were based on Pascal. In
May 1979, the Cii Honeywell/Bull language design proposal was chosen from
the four finalists as the design that would be used. The Cii Honeywell/Bull
design team in France, the only foreign competitor among the final four, was
led by Jean Ichbiah.
In the spring of 1979, Jack Cooper of the Navy Materiel Command rec-
ommended the name for the new language, Ada, which was then adopted. The
name commemorates Augusta Ada Byron (1815–1851), countess of Lovelace,
mathematician, and daughter of poet Lord Byron. She is generally recognized
as being the world’s first programmer. She worked with Charles Babbage on
his mechanical computers, the Difference and Analytical Engines, writing pro-
grams for several numerical processes.
The design and the rationale for Ada were published by ACM in its
SIGPLAN Notices (ACM, 1979) and distributed to a readership of more than
10,000 people. A public test and evaluation conference was held in October
1979 in Boston, with representatives from over 100 organizations from the
United States and Europe. By November, more than 500 language reports
had been received from 15 different countries. Most of the reports suggested
small modifications rather than drastic changes and outright rejections. Based
on the language reports, the next version of the requirements specification,
the Stoneman document (Department of Defense, 1980a), was released in
February 1980.
A revised version of the language design was completed in July 1980 and
was accepted as MIL-STD 1815, the standard Ada Language Reference Manual.
The number 1815 was chosen because it was the year of the birth of Augusta
Ada Byron. Another revised version of the Ada Language Reference Manual
was released in July 1982. In 1983, the American National Standards Insti-
tute standardized Ada. This “final” official version is described in Goos and
Hartmanis (1983). The Ada language design was then frozen for a minimum
of five years.2.14.3 Language Overview
This subsection briefly describes four of the major contributions of the Ada
language.
Packages in the Ada language provide the means for encapsulating data
objects, specifications for data types, and procedures. This, in turn, provides
the support for the use of data abstraction in program design, as described in
Chapter 11.
The Ada language includes extensive facilities for exception handling,
which allow the programmer to gain control after any one of a wide variety