Security demand brings back popularity to the Ada programming language. As the “best option for survival,” which emerged in the 70s at the initiative of the Pentagon and is used in Nvidia’s AI products, Ukrainian Miltech is driving

How the Ada language appeared in Ukraine

The initiator of teaching Ada in Ukrainian universities was Oleksandr Korochkin, an associate professor at the Department of Computer Engineering at the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. As a teacher of the course «Parallel and Distributed Computing», he began using the language in 1986. In the early 90s, he was a member of the working group of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine to develop the first educational standard in the field of «Computer Engineering», where the use of the Ada language was proposed. This contributed to its appearance in other universities in the country, such as the National Aviation University (now the Kyiv Aviation Institute), V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University (Mykolaiv), Uzhhorod National University, Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University and others. In addition, Oleksandr Korochkin became the author of the first manual on the Ada language in Ukraine.

In 1988, an international organization was founded in Europe — Ada-Europe, which currently includes communities from England, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, and other European countries.

Korochkin established contact with Ada-Europe to create an official community in Ukraine. But this did not work out: it was 1992 and «they were looking for a political subtext» in this initiative.

«We teamed up with Kharkiv University and prepared all the necessary documents, which we submitted to the Ministry of Justice, but due to the political situation, we were unable to do so,» says the associate professor.

But Korochkin independently became a member of Ada-Europe, and still maintains contact with the community and has its support. In 2002, he prepareda report for the European community on the topic «Ada 95 as a basic language for computer engineering in Ukrainian education». In it, he provided a justification for using the language as a basic one in Ukrainian education. He ended his report with the words «If the software for controlling Ukrainian nuclear power plants had been made in Ada, the Chernobyl tragedy could have been avoided». With this report, he also visited the university in Brighton, England, where the language is widely used.

The emergence of the Ukrainian Ada community

After an unsuccessful attempt to create an official community, an unofficial one appeared in Ukraine 10 years later.

In 2002, two Ukrainians, Maksym Reznik and Oleksandr Gava, founded Ada-Ru, an international community for Russian-speaking Ada users.

It all started with a book that Gava wrote about Ada. The thing is that there was a lot of literature about the first version of Ada83, but over time, interest in the language decreased. Therefore, when Ada95 was released, almost no one translated it. It was this gap that the IT guy from Lviv tried to fill.

To discuss terminology, IT people started with mailing lists in Yahoo! Groups, then the adru.org website appeared, which was run by Reznik.

In addition, Ukrainians collaborated with universities and teachers. For example, they organized meetings and seminars at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University.

After a full-scale invasion in 2022, the Ada-Ru community ceased to exist and the site was closed. Instead, Reznik initiated the creation of a Ukrainian community, Ada-Ukraine, namely: a site on GitHub with translations of foreign articles and courses into Ukrainian, as well as a Telegram group. The small number of participants shows that the popularity of this language in Ukraine is very low.

Maksym Reznik personally became interested in Ada in the early 2000s. At that time, C, Pascal, and Basic were popular, but Ada’s capabilities were already an order of magnitude higher than those of these languages.

Since 2011, Resnick has been working remotely at AdaCore, where he currently holds the position of software development consultant.

Why a 40-year-old language is trending again

In July, Ada ranked 10th in the TIOBE index. According to the CEO of TIOBE Software BV, in a world where security is becoming increasingly important, Ada is «the best option for survival» because it was originally designed for the most secure, mission-critical systems.

The resurgence of Ada’s popularity as a programming language has been attributed to changes in the industry. It is said that the avionics world, which previously switched to C++, is now returning to Ada, as is the automotive industry.

It seems that for creating software that absolutely cannot fail—whether it’s airplanes, driverless cars, missiles, or anything else mission-critical—Ada’s reputation as a reliable language wins out.

The fact that Nvidia has begun working with AdaCore to implement Ada into its next-generation AI products only reinforces this idea.

» Ada has interesting products that allow you to formally prove the correctness of a program. That is, when you describe the specification, run the tool, it tells you that there are no errors in this program. It fully corresponds to the task set, the specification set. It is quite difficult to get this in other languages. Therefore, when NVIDIA saw such opportunities, it decided to try this tool. After successful testing, the company began to use it. This may have become a signal for others,» says Resnik.

Also, according to Resnick, there are other factors that are returning Ada’s popularity — reliability, security, and the possibility of long-term use, which is very important for large-scale projects.

«Every week we read in the news about large-scale hacks and failures in information systems on the Internet, leading to impressive losses. This forces companies to look for more reliable solutions and turn to languages ​​that offer appropriate capabilities. Increasingly, government agencies are also calling for this,» explains Resnik.

When developing a new language standard (which is usually updated every 10 years), the emphasis is on ensuring compatibility so that new language features do not conflict with previous ones.

«If you take a program that was written in Ada 83 or Ada 95, there is a high probability that it will compile without errors. At that time, modern programming languages ​​​​are not limited by these requirements, they develop rapidly, so they are more likely to lose compatibility with previous versions. If you take the same Python, the transition from version 2 to version 3 was a headache for the entire Python community. For small programs, this is not a problem. In addition, when it is a large system, where there are many components that interact with each other, Ada also has an advantage, because it provides a clear separation of interfaces. All this makes it easier to write and maintain large programs,» the IT specialist adds.

What is happening with Ada in Ukraine now?

Teaching Ada in IT courses for children

Among other advantages of Ada is that it has well-organized multitasking, making it easier to learn for children who are learning programming.

This is the opinion of Andriy Ogorodnyk, who works as a programmer at AdaCore and has taught IT courses for children at the Boteon robotics center in Chernivtsi for several years.

«The basic constructs are universal for all languages. But there are nuances when I told children about multitasking. In Ada it is very well organized: everything is done there by the constructs of the language itself, so it can be explained even to children. Unlike other languages, where it is more difficult to convey to children multitasking, rendezvous, control and parameter passing.»

Ogorodnyk himself began learning Ada in 2012, while working on a statistics-related project. He was advised to pay attention to the language because he needed to write a large program.

«In other languages, when you cross a certain threshold, certain difficulties arise — they start to fall apart. And people advised, take a look at Ada, you can do it there,» Ogorodnyk recalls.

KPI students became more interested in Ada

Currently, KPI students are using Ada in their third year as part of the discipline «Parallel and Distributed Computing», taught by Oleksandr Korochkin, in diploma and course projects, as well as in the department’s scientific research. The program provides for 18 weeks of training, which includes two lectures and one laboratory session each week. The department has created a computer class with 15 multi-core computers with Ada language compilers from the well-known company PTC Inc. (Parametric Technology Corporation).

The American company PTC is a manufacturer of software and services for industrial businesses, in particular, it provides Ada development tools for Windows, Linux or UNIX systems. For many years, the company has provided KPI with modern compilers used in equipment for educational laboratories free of charge.

In addition to PTC, the university has direct support from the software developer AdaCore. The company, which provides technical support for the use of Ada, has launched a separate program, AdaCoreAcademia, within which more than 300 universities from around the world receive support. Thus, the company provides KPI with compilers and necessary literature.

In the discipline «Parallel and Distributed Computing» when performing laboratory work, students can choose a programming language. What is most interesting is that previously out of a hundred students, 2-3 people chose Ada. In 2025, their number increased to approximately 15 students, says Korochkin.

«When I analyzed the need for Ada specialists in the world on specialized sites, I found out that there is a need for such specialists, but most of the vacancies are related to the military industry. Now, when it comes to Ukraine’s membership in NATO and cooperation with the military, in particular with Western ones, knowledge of this language can give a special advantage to Ukrainian IT specialists,» says Korochkin.

Ada in Ukrainian MilTech

Ada is a programming language for large-scale projects, not only military but also civilian. For example, Ada was chosen to develop an automatic piloting system on one of the metro lines in Paris precisely because of its reliability, security, and long-term software life cycle.

There are no such projects in Ukraine, perhaps because of this there is a shortage of such specialists in our market. But Ukrainian MilTech companies have started using Ada in their projects and accordingly need IT professionals with knowledge of this language, who are not easy to find.

Among such MilTech companies is the Ukrainian defense-industrial complex enterprise Athlon Avia, the manufacturer of the unmanned aerial reconnaissance and artillery fire correction complex Furia .

«We have been working with Ada since 2017. We use it in projects that require parallel computing and confidence in the security of service operations: system supervisors, device processors, user managers, etc. Since 2021, we have started using Ada for embedded, and since 2023 we have made it the main and only language for microcontroller devices,» says the Head of Engineering of Athlon Avia.

In his opinion, the main advantage of Ada for the company’s developments is its reliability and security.

«After all, Ada provides the most confidence» that a project will work as expected after a successful compilation. When human lives are at stake, this is the most important criterion. Ada, as a strongly typed language, encourages the author to use separate types to more accurately describe domain concepts, which makes the program easier for a human to read and allows the compiler to find more errors. For example, if you have different types for meters and seconds, the compiler will easily detect when you try to add meters and seconds. On the other hand, the rich type representation specification allows you to map your types directly to available hardware resources, specifying field widths in bits, alignment, addresses, and interrupts, which makes low-level system programming more intuitive and easier,» explains the Head of Engineering.

The company was looking for a developer with Ada knowledge to join the team, but they were lucky to find one quickly because the Head of Engineering is part of the Ukrainian Ada community.

«Since I have been in the Ada developer community for a long time, we found him very quickly and he was one of the best developers in Ukraine — we were very lucky with him,» added the company’s Head of Engineering. «But in addition to experienced developers, we have an employee who learned about Ada only when he came to work for us. Before that, he worked as a .NET senior, but under the guidance of our experienced developers, he quickly figured it out.»

When asked whether the company needs more such specialists, the chief IT specialist of Athlon Avia replied that they are «always looking for talented and interested employees.»

Instead of a conclusion

After losing popularity in the early 2000s, it seems that Ada’s core strengths are back in vogue as the need for safe and reliable code is more critical than ever.

Its strong typing, concurrency support, and safety features make it an excellent choice for mission-critical systems. Despite all this, Ada remains an invaluable tool in aerospace, defense, and other high-stakes industries where failure is an impossibility.

Read the country’s main IT news in our Telegram

On the topic

Read the country’s main IT news in our Telegram