The Steelman language requirements were a set of requirements which a high-level general-purpose programming language should meet, created by the United States Department of Defense in The Department of Defense Common High Order Language program in 1978.
The requirements focused on the needs of embedded computer applications, and emphasised reliability, maintainability, and efficiency. Notably, they included exception handling facilities, run-time checking, and parallel computing.
The Ada 95 revision of the language went beyond the Steelman requirements, targeting general-purpose systems in addition to embedded ones, and adding features supporting object-oriented programming.
Many new features have been introduced in Ada 2005 and Ada 2012.
Ada could be said to have a stale reputation. A language designed by committee and used in an environment where changing a line of code involved a paragraph of paperwork.
Clearly without that paperwork the experience of programming in Ada changes also.
So why does a C programmer of 10 years programming in C, 1 year C++ and 8 years managing a team of 6 C++ programmers suddenly decide that Ada is the language of the future? (And after over 800 hours using Ada does not change his mind.)
My first 3 line program was written in BASIC on a typewriter in 1975. In 1978 I had access to a terminal with a BASIC interpreter and by 1980 I had my first computer with 8K of RAM and started to program in 6502 machine code, on which subject I wrote a book.
By 1985 there was not much I hadn't done in 6502 assembler and I was also capable in 68000 and ARM assembler. It was only popular pressure and the fact that C compiled into tight assembler on the Archimedes, the first computer to contain the now ubiquitous ARM processor, that turned me into a C programmer in 1990 and I continued to spend most of my working life programming in C until
In 1997 I attended a software quality presentation and took on my first C++ programmer and somewhere after that we switched to Java. I left in 2005.
I remember being sceptical as in 1988 most employers demanded at least 3 years experience in C programming before they would look at you. My early experiences working with other programmers on our first big project convinced my they were right. The messes we were able to make in the very large amount of code we produced were an achievement in themselves. Four of us worked for about a year on the project and then I spent the next three re-designing and re-writing it all to finally produce something that ran solidly.
During my 6502 assembler days working for the BBC I never over ran a project. The longest being 6 months. Even with C I never overran. All that was to change.
1997 I took a more management role and started developing the C++ team which I think was 8 people at its largest. The book "The mythical man month" began to have meaning. Deadlines regularly overran. Pain and suffering were the norm but it was all "re-usable" pain and suffering!