[glacia01]

There are a lot of aspects where Ada is better than C. Just a few things that came to mind:

General lack of dumb C stuff like switch fallthrough, null terminated strings (Arrays in Ada are passed with fat pointers), undefined behavior, no need for memcpy, no preprocessor bullshit etc.

Ada is more like C++ in functionality so it has Generics, Tasks (Threads), Exceptions, Packages, Strong types, Design by contract etc (All much much saner than C++ stuff)

Despite all of the features it's very embedded friendly. Language allows you to disable features you dont wont with Restrictions Pragma (Very long list of restrictions you can apply: https://docs.adacore.com/gnat_rm-docs/html/gnat_rm/gnat_rm/s...). You can also fairly easily change runtimes: https://docs.adacore.com/gnat_ugx-docs/html/gnat_ugx/gnat_ug....

[Galanwe]

I know berating C is trendy, but it feels a bit gratuitous and uncalled for in your comment...

> Ada is better than C

> lack of dumb C stuff

Back to your comment, strong types and generics look super nice for embedded. Not sure I would like fat pointers, exceptions and threads in my embedded code though.

[Jtsummers]

Tasks in Ada aren't threads, per se, unlike how many people describe them. They can be implemented with threads, but they don't have to be. For embedded and real time systems you likely have a task system suitable for that sort of environment (I'd hope) and Ada compilers targeting such systems will use an appropriate task system.

[glacia01]

>I know berating C is trendy, but it feels a bit gratuitous and uncalled for in your comment...

Sorry about that, English is not my first language so i might sound rude sometimes. I actually dont hate C, but if you used it you know its flaws. I think stuff i mentioned about C is objectively bad, hence why i called them dumb stuff.

>Not sure I would like fat pointers, exceptions and threads in my embedded code though

Fat pointers are just pointer + size of an object. You have to pass array size anyway, so its just convenient. Obviously, if you need to just pass a pointer there are ways to do that.

As for exceptions and threads: As i said, you can disable or modify them just by using Restrictions pragma. Its a language defined thing. For example, Ada 2022 defines two profiles for safety-critical hard real-time computing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenscar_profile http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/22rm/html/rm-d-13.html

[Galanwe]

> Sorry about that, English is not my first language so i might sound rude sometimes

No offense taken, not a native here either ;-)

> if you used it you know its flaws

Indeed, I've been using C for almost 20 years now. I won't say it's without flaw for sure, it has its quirks, but overall I do think it's quite okay for the job.

> Fat pointers are just pointer + size of an object

Yeah I know what fat pointers are, I even resort to handcraft some form in C for some neat performance hackery on x64.

But the thing is, we're talking embedded here. Most ucontrollers I use have 8b address space, no MMU or any form of virtual memory, separated instruction/data bus (MVHA). That kind of thing don't play well with funky fat pointers.

Sure if your definition of embedded is "64b ARM" all is good, but I guess we're on a spectrum.

Exceptions are pretty much non existing as well, since that would require some form of runtime, which you often just cannot afford on a small chip (if not just form the sheer size of it).

Threading is a no go as well. To get threads, or any form of multitasking really, you have to rely on an operating system, which by definition is a bit weird to have on an embedded IC.

[glacia01]

>But the thing is, we're talking embedded here. Most ucontrollers I use have 8b address space, no MMU or any form of virtual memory, separated instruction/data bus (MVHA). That kind of thing don't play well with funky fat pointers.

You can definitely use Ada on 8bit microcontrollers, for example on 8bit AVR: https://docs.adacore.com/gnat_ugx-docs/html/gnat_ugx/gnat_ug...

You can make runtime as small as you want.

As for exceptions and threads: I mentioned them because thats what comes to mind first, there are more benefits obviously.