Ada: A new programming language: The Department of Defense developed an incredible new programming language and named it in honor of Ada Lovelace, the world´s first programmer

In an attempt to control defense software costs while maintaining system reliability, the DOD (Department of Defense) has sponsored the development of a new programming language, called Ada. While Ada supports many of the features found in Fortran and Pascal, it has additional features making it easier and more reliable to use in large complex engineering software systems. Currently, the DOD is requiring that many new defense software systems be written in Ada. The author reviews the history of Ada´s development and examines the primary constructs of the language. The philosophy behind Ada program design is reviewed by designing and coding a simple program to add two matrices. Ada´s future prospects are examined as related to both defense and nondefense applications.