Jean David Ichbiah (25 March 1940 – 26 January 2007) was a French computer scientist and the initial chief designer (1977–1983) of

Ada Ada may refer to: Places Africa * Ada Foah, a town in Ghana * Ada (Ghana parliament constituency) * Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria Asia * Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, ...

, a general-purpose, strongly typed programming language with certified validated

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

Early life

Ichbiah was a descendant of Greek and Turkish Jews from

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of the geographic region of ...

who emigrated to France.

Career

From 1972 to 1974, he worked on designing an experimental system implementation language called LIS, based on Pascal and Simula. (He had been chairman of the Simula User's Group.) He was also one of the founding members of IFIP WG 2.4 on Systems Implementation Languages. He then joined

CII Honeywell Bull Bull SAS (also known as Groupe Bull, Bull Information Systems, or simply Bull) is a French computer company headquartered in Les Clayes-sous-Bois, in the western suburbs of Paris. The company has also been known at various times as Bull General ...

(CII-HB) in Louveciennes, France, becoming a member of the Programming Research division. Ichbiah's team submitted a language design labelled "Green" to a competition to choose the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national sec ...

's embedded programming language. When Green was selected in 1978, he continued as chief designer of the language, now named "

". In 1980, Ichbiah left CII-HB and founded the

Alsys Alsys, SA. (founded 1980, merged 1995) was a software development company created to support initial work on the Ada programming language. In July 1995, Alsys merged to become Thomson Software Products (TSP), which merged into Aonix in 1996. Hist ...

corporation in

La Celle-Saint-Cloud La Celle-Saint-Cloud () is a commune in the Yvelines department of the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is a western suburb of Paris, from the center. Population Transport La Celle-Saint-Cloud is served by two stations on th ...

, which continued language definition to standardize Ada 83, and later went into the Ada compiler business, also supplying special validated compiler systems to

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

, the

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

, and others. He later moved to the

Waltham, Massachusetts Waltham ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, and was an early center for the labor movement as well as a major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, ...

subsidiary of Alsys. In the 1990s, Ichbiah designed the keyboard layout

FITALY FITALY is a keyboard layout specifically optimized for stylus or touch-based input. The design places the most common letters closest to the centre to minimize distance travelled while entering a word. The name, FITALY, is derived from the letters ...

, which is specifically optimized for stylus or touch-based input. Subsequently, he started the Textware Solutions company, which sells text entry software for PDAs and

tablet PC A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being comput ...

s, as well as text-entry software for

medical transcription Medical transcription, also known as MT, is an allied health profession dealing with the process of transcribing voice-recorded medical reports that are dictated by physicians, nurses and other healthcare practitioners. Medical reports can be vo ...

on PCs.

Awards and honors

In 1979, Jean Ichbiah was designated a ''chevalier'' (knight) of the

French Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon B ...

and a ''correspondent'' of the French Academy of Sciences. He received a Certificate of Distinguished Service from the

for his work on Ada.

Death

Jean Ichbiah died from complications of a

brain tumor A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seconda ...

on January 26, 2007.

References

External links

*
Jean Ichbiah (1940-2007)
', press release by the Ada Resource Association
Programming pioneer dies — A tribute to Ada's Jean Ichbiah
, by Phil Manchester (2007-02-02)
Obituary
by

Bertrand Meyer Bertrand Meyer (; ; born 21 November 1950) is a French academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language and the idea of design by contract. Education and academic career Meyer rece ...

, as published in SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
Jean Ichbiah, 66; designed landmark computer language
(Boston Globe)

(Computerworld)

Ada 83 designer Jean Ichbiah dies
Ada User's Journal, Ada-Europe 2007 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ichbiah, Jean David Ada (programming language) American computer scientists Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Neurological disease deaths in Massachusetts Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts Deaths from brain cancer in the United States French computer scientists 20th-century French Sephardi Jews Members of the French Academy of Sciences Programming language designers Programming language researchers 1940 births 2007 deaths