Celebrating 30 years of AdaCore
For 30 years, AdaCore has provided the essential tools for building reliable, safe, and secure software. Throughout these decades, the Ada programming language and freely licensed open-source software have been integral to AdaCore’s mission.
CEO and AdaCore co-founder Franco Gasperoni takes pride in the company’s association with Ada and its Ada 95 pioneers, such as Tucker Taft and the late Robert Dewar (also a co-founder with Cyrille Comar, Richard Kenner, and Ed Schonberg):
“Ada’s precision programming, which combines specifications, typing, and coding, remains at the core of our approach. In the last decade, we have extended precision programming with automated verification in SPARK/Ada. It is no surprise that, as we expand our palette of supported languages, we have embraced Rust alongside Ada, SPARK, and the less precise but essential C/C++ languages.”
AdaCore was also a pioneer in developing an innovative business model for commercializing freely licensed open-source software at a time when its benefits were less widely understood and accepted than they are today. AdaCore embraces the collaborative and dynamic interaction between commercial users and open-source technologies through contributions to the Free Software Foundation and platforms like GitHub.
Over the years, partnerships with other companies have become increasingly important. One of these partners is Wind River. Paul Parkinson is the Field Engineering Director, Aerospace & Defence, EMEA at Wind River,
“I remember fondly my first visit to AdaCore’s Paris office in December 2000 to meet with Franco Gasperoni and the AdaCore team to discuss the field integration of AdaCore GNAT Pro and Wind River’s Tornado IDE and VxWorks 5.4. The technical collaboration flourished into a strong partnership. Looking back over two decades of working together, it’s satisfying to see how AdaCore’s leadership in Ada technologies and Wind River’s VxWorks platforms have been successfully deployed together by many mutual customers on high integrity and safety-critical avionics programs.”
CTO of AdaCore,Arnaud Charletcelebrates the focus on safe and secure software and how this has enabled them to find a distinctive market position,
“We started 30 years ago with an Ada front-end to GCC. We then gradually expanded to a fully integrated development environment supported on multiple platforms, enhanced with debugging, source navigation, completion, pretty-printing, advanced static and dynamic analysis capabilities, and C, C++, and Rust support. Our focus on safe and secure software has put us in a unique position where we can offer very long-term support and maintenance, as well as state-of-the-art software supply chain security and safety guarantees.”
AdaCore is known for putting its customers’ needs first. Quentin Ochem has worked at AdaCore for 20 years and is now Chief Product and Revenue Officer,
“I’ve had the opportunity to witness two out of the three decades of the company’s existence.
I joined AdaCore because I wanted to work on compilers and I wanted to work on Ada. However, I was hooked as the company embraced new technology avenues, static analysis, structural code coverage, certification, or formal proof. Today, we’re continuing on this track, completing the offer with new programming languages and tools, gearing towards being the trusted one-stop shop for high-integrity developers. I’m excited to be part of that journey, and more than ever, I look forward to the decades to come!”
