Contemporary Cybernetics

ADA DEVELOPMENTS The ADA programming language project, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Defence, will have far reaching effects on both the programming and the design of future computers. Its original objects were to cater for the production of reliable, readable programs for communicating with computer systems. There was to be a formality of language definition and even simplicity in its concept. Whether these aims have been achieved at the design level is, as discussed in Kybernetes (10(3), 156, 1981), still the subject of controversy. Certainly Prof. C. A. R. Hoare (Oxford University, U.K.) has reservations.