Jean David Ichbiah (born 25 March 1940) was the chief designer of the Ada programming language, from 1977–1983. At the time, he was a member of the Programming Research division at CII Honeywell Bull (CII-HB) in Louveciennes, France. He had previously designe an experimental system Implementation language called LIS (1972–1974), based on Simula (in fact, he had been chairman of the Simula User's Group), and was one of the founding members of IFIP WG 2.4 on Systems Implementation Languages [1]. Jump to: navigation, search March 25 is the 84th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (85th in leap years). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1940 was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Ada is a structured, statically typed imperative computer programming language designed by a team lead by Jean Ichbiah of CII Honeywell Bull during 1977–1983. ... Groupe Bull (also known as Bull Computer or simply Bull) is a French computer company based in Louveciennes, France, outside Paris. ... Jump to: navigation, search Louveciennes is a village and commune in the Yvelines département, in France, in the western suburbs of Paris, between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and adjacent to Marly-le-Roi. ... Simula introduced the object-oriented programming paradigm and thus can be considered the first object-oriented programming language and a predecessor to Smalltalk, C++, Java, and all modern class-based object-oriented languages. ... Jump to: navigation, search The International Federation for Information Processing, usually known as IFIP, is an umbrella organization for national societies working in the field of information technology. ...

After Ada was selected by the United States Department of Defense (DoD), Ichbiah left CII-HB and founded the Alsys Corporation, which continued language definition work on Ada and later went into the Ada compiler business. The United States Department of Defense, abbreviated as DoD or DOD and sometimes called the Defense Department is a civilian Cabinet organization of the United States government. ...

Several of the key innovations Ichbiah introduced in Ada have been taken over in later languages such as C++ and Java: The notion of interface, first introduced by Ada Packages, Generic units, and Exception Handling.

Ichbiah now owns and runs the Textware company, which sells text entry software for PDAs and tablet PCs, as well as text entry software for Medical Transcription on PCs. Jump to: navigation, search Palm IIIxe PDA Personal digital assistants (PDAs or palmtops) are handheld devices that were originally designed as personal organizers, but became much more versatile over the years. ... Toshiba Portege 3500 tablet PC, in tablet configuration. ...

Jean Ichbiah is a member of the French Legion of Honor and the French Academy of Sciences, and received a Certificate of Distinguished Service from the DoD for his work on Ada. French Legion of Honor The Légion dhonneur (in Legion of Honor (AmE) or Legion of Honour (ComE)) is an Order of Chivalry awarded by the President of France. ... The French Academy of Sciences (Académie des sciences) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. ... The United States Department of Defense, abbreviated as DoD or DOD and sometimes called the Defense Department is a civilian Cabinet organization of the United States government. ...

External links

• Jean Ichbiah - Members of the French Academy of Sciences (in french)

References

• "Ada: Past, Present, Future - An Interview with Jean Ichbiah, the Principal Designer of Ada", Communications of the ACM, Volume 27, Number 10, p. 990–997, October 1984.