December 18, 2012 - The Ada Resource Association (ARA) and Ada-Europe today announced the approval and publication of the latest version of the Ada programming language by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The language revision, known as Ada 2012, was under the auspices of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG9 and was conducted by the Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG) subunit of WG9, with sponsorship in part from the ARA and Ada-Europe. The formal approval of the standard was issued on November 20 by ISO/IEC JTC 1, and the standard was published on December 15.

I am glad to say that the major area of improvement is the ability to specify contracts, something I was urging the Ada community to do back in 2002. The new features include the ability to specify preconditions and postconditions for subprograms, and invariants for private types. Another important area that received attention in this iteration is multi-core programming.

So if you are serious about mission critical software, head on to the web site and see what you have been missing.