Definition: Ada

(1) For Cardano's native crypto token. See Cardano.

(2) For the U.S. Department of Labor act regarding disabilities, see Americans with Disabilities Act.

(3) A high-level programming language developed by the U.S. Department of Defense along with the European Economic Community and other organizations. Introduced in 1980, Ada was designed for embedded applications and process control but is also used for logistics applications. Ada is a very comprehensive Pascal-based language.

Named After a Countess
Ada was named after Augusta Ada Byron (1815-1852), Countess of Lovelace and daughter of the poet Lord Byron and mathematician Annabella Milbanke Byron. Ada also became a mathematician and was the colleague of Charles Babbage, who was developing his Analytical Engine. Some of her programming notes for the machine have survived, giving her the distinction of being the first documented programmer in the world.

The following Ada program converts Fahrenheit to Celsius:

 with Text_IO;
 procedure Convert is
 package Int_IO is new Text_IO.Integer_IO(Integer);
 Fahrenheit : Integer;
 begin
  Text_IO.Put_Line("Enter Fahrenheit");
  Int_IO.Get(Fahrenheit);
  Text_IO.Put("Celsius is ");
  Int_IO.Put((Fahrenheit-32) * 5 / 9);
  Text_IO.New_Line;
 end Convert;