I had my Commodore PET for 10 years from 1977 to 1987 until I went away and my cousin borrowed it, and then believing I was not coming back to the US from Spain, sold it!
I loved the cassette drive and all-in-one chassis. Ah, typing in programs from magazines and creating programs from scratch with PET graphics on the keys! I miss those days. So much wonder and fun.
I never did that! Beats typing it in, but then again, I memorized the formula for creating a planar view of the 4 major moons of Jupiter at a given time by programming it all in PET Basic!
I've always liked generative art and I am getting up to speed on Ada 2022, so this is a fitting article. Currently using SPARK2014/Ada 2022 for a high-integrity, safety-critical automation control software project.
When I started to really get into robotics, mechanics, and automation back in the late 80s and early 90s, the fork in the road of Rodney Brooke's subsumption architecture, but still digital, approach versus Mark Tilden's BEAM analog approach really had me trying both.
CPGs (Central Pattern Generators) were often implemented using simple RC (resistor-capacitor) circuits within his "nervous net" (NvNet) architectures. The RC circuits generated rhythmic patterns that drove the robots' motor behaviors, allowing gaits to emerge naturally from the interaction of these analog components with the environment and the robot's mechanical structure. This approach enabled adaptive, robust locomotion without requiring complex digital control systems.
His 6-legged robots could lose a leg, and the system would take feedback from the stuck or missing leg, and learn to walk with 5 or 4 legs. Amazing stuff.
For my safety-critical automation software for a machine that will operate around people and overhead, I’m choosing Ada/SPARK2014. Its decades-long track record in high-integrity domains like aerospace, defense, and medical systems ensures reliability for applications where human safety is paramount. SPARK2014’s formal verification tools mathematically prove the absence of runtime errors, aligning with standards like DO-178C and ISO 26262, critical for my Q3 2026 market deadline. While Rust is gaining traction for memory safety, its formal verification tools, like LEAN/Aeneas, are still maturing and lack the production-ready ecosystem of Ada/SPARK2014. Ada’s clear, structured syntax simplifies code reviews, and its tooling generates certification reports familiar to regulators, streamlining approval processes. For my project’s safety and business needs, Ada/SPARK2014 is the proven choice - for now. I am not a fan of Rust syntax or complexity, but that is somewhat subjective. I last dove in about 2 years ago.
This is effectively a fork of the Rust Reference, made by Ferrous, and laid out in a way that allowed the compiler to be qualified. It now lives at this URL, because it's being adopted by upstream as the spec.
Sounds like progress is being made on the language spec front, that's good to see.
I'm not following what you meant by this though, it seems like a contradiction:
> A language specification is not required to be qualified. The behavior of the compiler needs to be described.
But they're putting work into reviving the language spec, to enable certification? Also, if the source language hasn't been described, then surely the compiler's behaviour hasn't been described.
Or did you mean that their documentation is for the Ferrous flavour of Rust and might not reflect the latest version of the Rust language?
It has already been qualified. Upstream has always wanted a spec. It’s being worked on because it’s desirable, not because it’s blocking safety critical cases.
You’re always going to need to have more than a language spec because you qualify compilers not languages.
> Also, if the source language hasn't been described, then surely the compiler's behaviour hasn't been described.
It has. At least to the degree that regulators find it acceptable.
> Or did you mean that their documentation is for the Ferrous flavour of Rust and might not reflect the latest version of the Rust language?
There is no difference in flavors, but it is true that each version of the spec is for a specific version of the compiler, and so sometimes that will lag a bit. But that’s just how this process works.
Yes, but a qualified compiler is but one of many pieces in having an ecosystem/tooling for creating, testing, and having high-integrity applications reviewed and certified. A couple of the industries we are elbowing in on, are already familiar with the type of reports generated by the AdaCore tooling. Ada has a decades-long history in safety-critical systems (e.g., Boeing, Airbus, NASA), with proven reliability in real-time, embedded applications.
AdaCore’s GNAT Pro suite includes qualified tools (e.g., GNAT Pro, CodePeer, GNATcheck) that support traceability, code coverage, and certification evidence for standards like MISRA, DO-178C, and EN 50128. These are battle-tested in aerospace, defense, and medical applications.
Ada is defined by an ISO standard, specifically ISO/IEC 8652. The latest revision, as of 2025, is Ada 2022 (ISO/IEC 8652:2023), which includes updates to the language features. Ada is also recognized as an ANSI standard through its adoption by the American National Standards Institute, aligning with the ISO specification. The standard defines the language’s syntax, semantics, and features, ensuring consistency across implementations including compilers.
Rust’s safety guarantees prevent many runtime errors, but its approach relies more on programmer discipline vs. Ada/SPARK2014's "correct by construction" methodology. Ada is designed for real-time systems, with built-in features like tasking, protected objects, and precise control over timing (e.g., Ravenscar profile), optimized for cyber-physical systems.
Excuse my verbosity, but I pulled a few things from our tech pitch deck, and a little of the above is in our business plan as well that I copy/pasted.
Two great books if you're interested:
Analysable Real-Time Systems: Programmed in Ada (2016)
Building High Integrity Applications with SPARK (2015)
Ah, I thought we were talking about the language, not the broader way it fits into everything else.
I am familiar with all of this stuff :) I think you may be under-estimating Rust a bit. But that’s fine.
Incidentally, you can also get a Rust qualified compiler from AdaCore. I haven’t kept up with what specific standards they’ve qualified it against though.
That's for automotive. We're shooting for a bunch of various relevant standards. There is no formal language spec. Who did that compiler? AdaCore's been around for a long time, so I am quick to use theirs if I were to chose Rust. I'm also following the Ironclad kernel project with its complementary OS called Gloire. Ada/SPARK for both with partial formal verification progress.
Automotive is the first industry that’s really taking up Ferrocene! They’re adding more stuff as more industries have demand for it.
Ferrous and AdaCore were originally collaborating, but then they parted ways. In my understanding they’re both largely the upstream codebase, I know that the Ferrous folks religiously upstream almost everything, no clue if AdaCore does as well.
I am excited Rust is heading in this direction. We had to go with SPARK2014/Ada (2022) when we made this decision over a year ago. Rust and its tooling was and is not ready for the safety critical control system we are developing. High-integrity, safety-critical auditors in government and industry are already aware of the types of reports generated by the AdaCore tooling, so this makes less friction in seeking these certifications. We are also hoping the Ironclad Kernel and Gloire OS gain traction. A kernel written in SPARK2014 and fully formally verified and a complementary OS using Ironclad would make it turtles all the way down to our bare metal controller up to the control system application and HMI. I will certainly keep Rust on my radar in the future. Do you have any examples of where Rust is mainly the PL used in a CPS (Cyber-Physical System) that requires this level of integrity and safety? SPARK has applications in avionics and other industries that go back for decades: Typhoon EuroFighter - flight control and mission-critical systems; Harrier GR9 - avionics; UK NATS iFACTS System - safety-critical air traffic control software; LifeFlow Ventricular Assist Device - medical device to support heart function. SPARK was used for its control software, and the list goes on and on.
The excitement kind of ebbed early on with seeing the video and realizing it had a plate/weight on one face.
"A few years later, the duo answered their own question, showing that this uniform monostable tetrahedron wasn’t possible. But what if you were allowed to distribute its weight unevenly?"
But the article progressed and mentioned John Conway, I was back!
Initially I thought it was unimpressive because of the plate. But then I thought about it a bit: a regular tetrahedron wouldn't do that no matter how heavy one of the faces was.
Article is three years old, and the fungi are not talking to us! I imagine the communication being a bit slow like the scene in the kids animated movie, Zootopia, where sloths work at the DMV..."P....L....E....A....S....E-------" don't tread on me! However, if like German 1 word can cover a whole concept, then 50 words may be sufficient to communicate in a reasonable time scale ;)
I spent 6 months in Saudi in 2022 and 2 months in 2023, and I went to the UAE and did business with both countries. They've been on this wave like the world has. The UAE mandated AI education in their schools, are acquiring and training talent, and have huge, huge amounts of money invested in developing on all fronts from education to engineering to application for their 2031 initiative. The AI genie is out of the bottle, and although OpenAI is a hybrid non-profit / for-profit company in that they have for-profit LLCs that are managed by the non-profit, so this gets murky. See OpenAI Holdings, LLC and OpenAI Global, LLC. I don't think you can monopolize technology such as AI when computing hardware is expanding in capability and cost is going down as well as the immediate ability to read research papers, YouTube videos, books, and all media available on the internet or other media venues. The Saudi Digital Library in the largest digital library in the Arab world. Is China's AI better than the West's? They've certaily implemented a lot of real world installations and applications of it, but I am not sure how it compares to the NSA pre and post Snowden.
The less than 400k population is a good sample size, however, their main revenue comes from tourism, aluminum smelting, and fisheries, and they have a relatively large source of geothermal and hydropower with a very homogenous population (>80% Icelandic). Data centers are about 1% of its GDP. Even Iceland needs barkeeps and restaurant workers to work at least 5 days/week with restaurants in touristy areas open 7 days/week with shorter days on Sunday. Having worked a life of manual labor and white-collar jobs, sometimes both in the same job, the 4-day work week is really for specific types of industry or work. Tech, for sure, but not the food service industry...
https://github.com/hundredrabbits/orca