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The Unlikely Contender: Why a 40-Year-Old Language is Causing a Stir in the Tiobe Index

Basic Info: A Challenger from the Past?

John: In the tech world, we’re conditioned to chase the new, the disruptive, the ‘next big thing.’ We talk about languages like Rust, Go, or Dart as the future. Yet, every month, when I look at the Tiobe Index—one of the industry’s long-standing barometers for programming language popularity—I’m reminded that stability and legacy often have more staying power than we give them credit for. The latest index reports are a perfect case in study, with a real surprise climbing the charts.

Lila: I’ve seen Tiobe mentioned all over tech news sites and Reddit, John, but for our readers who might be new to this, can you break it down? What exactly is the Tiobe Index, and why should anyone care about its monthly rankings?

John: Of course. The TIOBE Programming Community Index isn’t just a simple popularity contest. It’s a carefully calculated metric that aims to measure the ‘mindshare’ of a programming language. The company Tiobe uses a complex formula that aggregates data from over 25 search engines, including Google, Bing, and Wikipedia. They look for the number of skilled engineers worldwide, active courses, and third-party vendors associated with a language. Think of it as a stock market index for programming languages; it reflects not just what developers are currently using, but also the overall health of a language’s ecosystem.

Lila: So it’s more than just looking at what’s trendy on GitHub. The search results you gave me also mention another index, PYPL. How is that different?

John: An important distinction. The PYPL, or PopularitY of Programming Language index, has a simpler methodology. It analyzes how often language tutorials are searched for on Google. So, PYPL is a great indicator of which languages people are most interested in *learning*. Tiobe, on the other hand, gives a broader view of a language’s professional footprint. A high Tiobe ranking suggests a language is integral to the industry, with jobs, support, and established systems built around it. They tell different, but complementary, stories.

Lila: Okay, that makes sense. So, what’s the big surprise that’s shaking up this established index?

John: The surprise is a language named Ada. While Python, C++, and C predictably hold the top spots, Ada, a language conceived in the late 1970s, has surged back into the Tiobe top 10. This is significant because it’s outperforming much newer, more hyped languages. It’s a bit like seeing a classic, meticulously maintained car from the 80s keeping pace with modern sports cars in a long-distance race. It makes you stop and ask: what’s under that hood?

Supply Details: Getting Your Hands on Ada

Lila: That’s fascinating. If Ada is this powerful, specialized tool, how does a developer or a company even “get” it? Is it open-source like Python, where you just download an installer, or is it a more closed, commercial ecosystem?

John: That’s a great question, because the Ada ecosystem is a bit different from the mainstream. The central player in the modern Ada world is a company called AdaCore. They are the primary custodians and commercial vendors, but they also provide the core open-source toolchain, most notably the GNAT (GNU Ada Translator) compiler. This is part of the GCC (GNU Compiler Collection), which is the same bedrock foundation that compiles most of the world’s C and C++ code.

Lila: So there’s a free version available? You don’t have to pay a hefty license fee just to start learning or experimenting?

John: Exactly. Through the GNAT Community edition, anyone can download the full compiler, development environment, and libraries for free. This has been crucial for its adoption in academia and for hobbyists. For professional, safety-critical projects where you need guaranteed support, long-term maintenance, and official certification, companies typically purchase a subscription from AdaCore. They also recently introduced a modern package manager called Alire (Ada Library Repository), which is making it much easier to find, share, and use third-party libraries—something that has long been a breeze in the Python or JavaScript worlds but was historically more fragmented for Ada.

Lila: It sounds like the “supply chain” for the language is being modernized. You have the open-source entry point for everyone, a professional track for industry, and now a package manager to make development easier. It’s clearly evolving.

John: Precisely. It’s a deliberate effort to make a historically industrial-strength language more accessible to a modern developer audience without sacrificing the rigor that makes it valuable in the first place.

Technical Mechanism: The “Safety-First” Philosophy

Lila: You’ve used the term ‘safety-critical’ several times. What is it about Ada’s technical design that earns it this reputation? What’s going on under the hood that makes it so reliable for aerospace and railways?

John: This is the heart of why Ada is still so relevant. It was designed from the ground up with a philosophy of preventing errors before a program ever runs. Let me break down its core pillars:

Strong Static Typing: This is the big one. Ada is incredibly strict about data types. You can’t accidentally add a number to a text string, for instance. But it goes much deeper. You can define your own highly specific types, like a ‘Temperature’ type that can only hold values between -50 and 150, or a ‘Pressure’ type that must be positive. If you try to assign a value outside that range, the compiler will flag it as an error. It catches logical mistakes at compile-time (the stage where human-readable code is converted into machine code), not at run-time (when the program is actually executing on a device).
Concurrency and Tasking: Modern systems do many things at once. Think of a car’s computer managing the engine, brakes, infotainment, and collision avoidance simultaneously. Ada has concurrency (the ability to manage multiple tasks at once) built directly into the language with a feature called ‘tasking.’ This provides a very robust and verifiable way to handle parallel operations, which is notoriously difficult and error-prone in languages like C or C++.
Readability as a Feature: Ada’s syntax was intentionally designed to be verbose and look like plain English. This might seem inefficient to a Python or Perl programmer, but in a safety-critical context, it’s a feature, not a bug. Code that is easy for a human to read and review is code where bugs have fewer places to hide. The logic is explicit and clear.
Contract-Based Programming: This is a more advanced feature, enhanced in recent versions like Ada 2022. It allows a programmer to specify ‘contracts’ for a piece of code. You can define pre-conditions (what must be true before a function runs), post-conditions (what must be true after it finishes), and invariants (things that must always be true). The tooling can then mathematically prove or test that these contracts are never violated.

Lila: That sounds incredibly deliberate and structured. So if we were to use an analogy, a language like JavaScript is like a high-performance workshop with every tool imaginable, but no safety guards, whereas Ada is like a cleanroom environment for manufacturing microchips, where every step is controlled and verified?

John: That is a perfect analogy, Lila. Ada forces you to be a more disciplined engineer, not just a coder. The trade-off is that you can’t just slap things together as quickly. But the benefit is that when an Ada program compiles successfully, you have a much higher degree of confidence that it will behave exactly as you intended.

Team & Community: Small but Mighty

Lila: So who’s behind all this? With Python, you have the Python Software Foundation and a massive global community. For JavaScript, you have browser vendors and a similarly huge developer base. What does the Ada community look like?

John: The Ada community is a different breed. It doesn’t have the sheer size of the web or data science communities, and that’s by design. The ‘team’ began with the U.S. Department of Defense, which commissioned the language in the 70s to consolidate the hundreds of different languages being used in its embedded systems. The lead designer was a French computer scientist named Jean Ichbiah.

Lila: So it has a military background. Does that still influence it today?

John: It does, in its ethos of rigor and formal specification. But today, it’s not a ‘military language.’ The language standard is maintained by an international working group under the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). This means its evolution is slow, deliberate, and formal—focused on stability and backward compatibility. The community itself is smaller but highly professional. You’ll find them in aerospace and defense companies, in academic computer science departments that specialize in formal methods (a field of computer science that uses mathematical logic to verify software correctness), and on dedicated forums and the `r/ada` subreddit. It’s less about building a million frameworks and more about deep expertise in building reliable systems.

Use-Cases & Future Outlook: More Than Just Old Jets

Lila: You’ve given some great examples like the Boeing 777 and the International Space Station. Are those still the main use-cases, or is Ada finding a footing in newer technologies?

John: While its legacy in aerospace is undeniable, its principles are finding new relevance. Here’s a snapshot of where it’s used:

Aerospace: Still the flagship domain. Flight control software, engine controllers, navigation systems in aircraft from Airbus and Boeing, as well as in satellites and rockets.
Rail Transportation: Many of the world’s high-speed rail systems, like the French TGV, use Ada for their signaling and control systems, where timing and safety are paramount.
Medical Devices: Implantable devices like pacemakers and infusion pumps, where a software failure could be fatal.
Cybersecurity & Finance: Some high-security banking systems and cryptographic tools have been built with Ada or its formally verifiable subset, SPARK.

Lila: What about the future? With everything moving towards AI, the cloud, and the Internet of Things (IoT), does a language from the 70s have a place?

John: That’s precisely why its Tiobe ranking is climbing. The future is *full* of safety-critical systems. Think about it:

Autonomous Vehicles: Do you want the software controlling your self-driving car’s brakes to have a memory leak?
IoT and Smart Infrastructure: As our power grids, water systems, and homes become ‘smarter,’ they also become more vulnerable to bugs and cyber-attacks.
AI Safety: As AI models get integrated into physical systems, ensuring they operate within safe, predictable boundaries is a massive challenge.

In all these areas, the demand for verifiable, secure, and reliable software is exploding. Ada’s core design philosophy is a direct answer to these modern challenges. It’s not about running the AI model itself—Python is king there—but about writing the secure, real-time operating system that the AI runs on top of.

Competitor Comparison: Ada vs. The World

Lila: This brings us back to the Tiobe Index. Ada is in the top 10, but C, C++, and Java are still way ahead. And tech discourse is all about Rust now, which also promises safety. How does Ada stack up against its main competitors?

John: An excellent and necessary comparison. Let’s break it down by category.

Ada vs. C/C++: C and C++ are the undisputed kings of performance and low-level system access. They are used to build everything from operating systems to game engines. However, their philosophy is “trust the programmer.” They provide raw power but make it incredibly easy to make dangerous mistakes, especially with memory management (like buffer overflows, a common source of security exploits). Ada’s philosophy is “trust the language.” It restricts the programmer to prevent those very mistakes. It trades some raw flexibility for a massive gain in safety.
Ada vs. Java/C#: These are managed languages that run on a virtual machine. This automatically handles memory for you, which eliminates many of the bugs found in C++ code. They are hugely popular for enterprise applications and business logic. However, they aren’t typically used for ‘bare-metal’ embedded systems where you need predictable, real-time performance, which is Ada’s home turf. The overhead of the virtual machine can be a non-starter.
Ada vs. Rust: This is the most fascinating modern matchup. Rust is a new-generation systems language that tackles memory safety with a revolutionary ‘ownership and borrowing’ system, checked by the compiler. It offers safety comparable to Ada’s in that area, but with a C++-like syntax and a focus on performance. Many see Rust as the heir apparent for safe systems programming. The key difference lies in their heritage and scope. Ada’s safety model is broader, covering not just memory but also data constraints and concurrency in a highly integrated way, backed by decades of use in certified systems. Rust is newer, with a more modern toolchain and a rapidly growing, enthusiastic community. They are both top-tier tools for reliability, but they come at it from different angles.

Lila: So, if I’m understanding correctly, there isn’t one “best” language. C++ gives you raw power, Java gives you enterprise convenience, and both Ada and Rust offer different paths to achieving high-assurance, reliable systems?

John: You’ve nailed it. It’s about choosing the right tool for the specific problem you’re trying to solve. Ada’s resurgence shows that its particular set of trade-offs is becoming more, not less, valuable.

Risks & Cautions: No Silver Bullet

Lila: It sounds incredibly powerful, but nothing is perfect. For a team or a developer considering Ada for a new project, what are the potential downsides or risks they should be aware of?

John: Absolutely, being a veteran journalist means being a skeptic. There are significant hurdles to Ada adoption that we must acknowledge.

Smaller Talent Pool: This is probably the biggest business risk. There are far fewer experienced Ada developers than there are for Java, Python, or C++. Hiring for an Ada team can be challenging and expensive.
Steeper Learning Curve: The very strictness that makes Ada safe can make it feel restrictive and difficult for programmers accustomed to more dynamic languages. It demands a more formal, upfront design process, which can clash with modern ‘agile’ methodologies that favor rapid iteration.
Limited General-Purpose Ecosystem: If you need a library for a niche web service or the latest data analysis tool, you’ll find it instantly for Python. For Ada, the ecosystem is deep but narrow, focused on its core domains. You may find yourself writing more foundational code from scratch.
Perception Problem: Despite its technical merits, Ada is often unfairly labeled as ‘old,’ ‘academic,’ or a ‘government language.’ Overcoming this perception in a development team can be an uphill battle.

Lila: So it’s a serious commitment. You’re trading the vast ecosystem and talent pool of mainstream languages for unparalleled, built-in safety and reliability.

John: That is the fundamental trade-off, yes. It’s a strategic choice, not a casual one.

Expert Opinions / Analyses: The View from the Top

John: Let’s bring it back to the Tiobe report itself, because the analysis from Tiobe’s CEO, Paul Jansen, is quite telling. He pointed out that while the top 5 languages are fairly static, there’s a fascinating “battle of the veterans” happening further down the list. Languages like Ada, Delphi, and Fortran are consistently holding strong positions.

Lila: And they’re fending off the newer languages we hear so much about?

John: Exactly. Jansen noted that newer darlings like Rust, Kotlin, Dart, and Julia are still struggling to break into that upper echelon. He then made a specific prediction, saying that if he had to bet on which of the older languages would be the “best survivor,” he’d bet on Ada. His direct reasoning? “With the ever-stronger demands on security, Ada is, as a system programming language in the safety-critical domain, likely the best survivor.” This isn’t just a fan’s opinion; it’s an analysis from the head of the organization that tracks these trends professionally.

Latest News & Roadmap: An Evolving Standard

Lila: Is Ada a static language, or is it still being actively developed and updated? What’s the latest news on its roadmap?

John: It’s very much a living language, but it evolves at a measured, academic pace, not the breakneck speed of web frameworks. The language standard is updated roughly every decade by the ISO working group. We had Ada 83, Ada 95, Ada 2005, Ada 2012, and the most recent standard is Ada 2022.

Lila: What did the 2022 update bring to the table?

John: Ada 2022 was a significant release. It focused on strengthening its core features, particularly contract-based programming. It introduced more powerful syntax for defining pre- and post-conditions, added new capabilities for parallel programming, and integrated even more compile-time checks for program logic. The roadmap is always focused on one thing: making it easier for developers to write correct, maintainable, and secure code. The ‘latest news’, of course, is its continued good performance in the Tiobe and PYPL indices, signaling that this steady evolution is paying off in renewed interest.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Lila: This has been incredibly insightful. Let’s wrap up with a quick FAQ section for our readers who might have some lingering questions.

John: An excellent idea. Fire away.

Lila: First: Is Ada a dead language?

John: Emphatically no. It is a niche language, but it is mission-critical in its niche. Its recent performance in popularity indices shows it’s not only alive but gaining relevance. Dead languages don’t power the world’s air travel and high-speed trains.

Lila: Is Ada only for military and government projects?

John: That’s a common myth due to its origins. While it’s still used there, its primary use today is in the commercial sector: aviation, rail, automotive, and medical technology. Any field where a software bug can have catastrophic consequences is a candidate for Ada.

Lila: Can I use it to build a website or a mobile app?

John: You technically could, as there are libraries for web servers. However, it would be a very unconventional choice. It’s like using a Formula 1 car to go grocery shopping. It’s not what it was designed for. You’re much better off with JavaScript, TypeScript, Swift, or Kotlin for those tasks.

Lila: Is Ada hard to learn?

John: It has a reputation for being difficult, but I’d say it’s ‘demanding.’ It forces you to think clearly and deliberately about your code’s design. This initial discipline can feel hard, but many Ada programmers would argue it makes development easier in the long run by eliminating entire classes of bugs before you even start testing.

Lila: If I wanted to start, where’s the best place to go?

John: I’d highly recommend AdaCore’s learning portal at learn.adacore.com. It has interactive courses that run in your browser. The AdaCore University also offers a wealth of free materials and videos. That’s the best entry point for any curious developer.

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