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   clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 16-Apr-2026 06:12:46 JST clacke

   Many programming languages were originally written or are even still partially written in C. Rust was originally written in OCaml.

   Are there any languages that were originally written in Ada?

   #Ada #AdaLang #AdaLanguage #bootstrapping

   • Embed this notice
     Cole B. (csb6@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 24-Apr-2026 14:37:15 JST Cole B.

     in reply to

     @clacke The only example of a real language with its initial implementation written in Ada that I know of is the ParaSail language. (https://github.com/parasail-lang/parasail) It was designed by the lead designer of Ada 95 and subsequent Ada standards so no surprise that he picked it. I suspect most language designers use the language they are most familiar with and that is rarely Ada

     clacke likes this.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 24-Apr-2026 14:37:17 JST clacke

     in reply to
     One person in the usenet thread says they'd prefer Ada to other languages when implementing a compiler, which ties right back to the originating question of this thread, but then they don't mention any language implementation actually bootstrapped from Ada.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 24-Apr-2026 14:37:18 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Cole B.

     @csb6 Also interesting to learn that Alsys Ada itself was bootstrapped from a PL/I compiler from Ada to PL/I.

     I suppose PL/I as a "ground" language would have been common in those days in certain circles, before Unix, Windows and Linux made C and C++ completely dominate systems programming.

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     Cole B. (csb6@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 24-Apr-2026 14:37:19 JST Cole B.

     in reply to

     @clacke Just stumbled across this - GNAT was bootstrapped from a proprietary Ada compiler (from Alsys) until it got to the point where it could self-host. See https://usenet.ada-lang.io/comp.lang.ada/5ee5b646.0202250655.6fd2bfb8@posting.google.com/

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 24-Apr-2026 14:37:20 JST clacke

     in reply to
     Can't find info on whether GNAT was bootstrapped from Ed/Ada or something else.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 24-Apr-2026 14:37:21 JST clacke

     in reply to

     archive.adaic.com/pol-hist/his…

     The first 1815A validation certificate was issued for the Ada/Ed interpreter on 11 April 1983, [ . . . ] By 1987 there were more than 100 validated compilers, and by 1992 this number had grown to about 400.

     😮

     The examples of implementation language given are subsets of ADA and cross-compiling from machines that had ADA, except for that first compiler written in SETL.

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 24-Apr-2026 14:37:23 JST clacke

     in reply to

     It is difficult to find information on how modern proprietary Ada compilers are implemented.

     DDG threw an AI answer at me, which didn't reveal anything more than that WP article. There seems to be a lot of silent information in the Ada world. Perhaps not a surprise, given the roots in military applications and industry rather than academia.

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 24-Apr-2026 14:37:24 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Gemlog
     @gemlog I think the key thing to point out here was that the DoD published the specification, and then a bunch of different actors implemented compilers. One had to be first with a release, but they all would have worked independently and bootstrapped it in different ways. So how "Ada" was bootstrapped doesn't have one answer, as "Ada" is an ANSI specification, later an ISO specification, rather than an implementation.
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     Gemlog (gemlog@friendface.kalum.ca)'s status on Friday, 24-Apr-2026 14:37:30 JST Gemlog

     in reply to
     The first validated Ada implementation was the NYU Ada/Ed translator,[27] certified on April 11, 1983. NYU Ada/Ed is implemented in the high-level set language SETL.
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)?useskin=vector#History