158: Programming Is Too Difficult for Humans

Fabien Chouteau (@DesChips) of AdaCore (@AdaCoreCompany) spoke with us about theMake with Ada Programming Competition.

Giveaway boards are GONE. 

The Ada programming language (wiki) is interesting in that it was designed for safety critical embedded systems (actually designed, requirements doc and everything!). The Ada Information Clearinghouse has a nice list of tutorials and books as does the very helpful Make with Ada Getting Started page. Elecia's favorite was Inspirel's Ada on Cortex.

Some neat projects in Ada that we mentioned on the show:

• Fabien's CNC Controller (with code in github)
• Tetris on a Smart Watch (with a formal proof via SPARK)
• Nano drone flight controller (with formal proof via SPARK)

The platforms supported in the contest are on the Getting Started page but you can expand that by looking at the SVD files in the AdaCore drivers on github. (Also, SVD files are neat.) One of the platforms already supported is the Crazyflie nanodrone.