FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ada-Europe Announces First "Ada Way" Award Winners and
"Try and Beat Me" Challenge

Brussels, Belgium (July 30, 2012) - Ada-Europe, www.ada-europe.org,
the international organization that promotes the knowledge and use
of the Ada programming language in European academia, research and
industry, launched "The Ada Way" annual student programming contest
in September 2010. The first challenge was to build a software
simulator of a football (soccer) match. The submitted code had to
include a software core implementing the logic of the simulation,
and read-write graphical panels for interactive team management.

The evaluation committee chose one of the submissions made until April
2012, which at the recent Ada-Europe 2012 conference in Stockholm
was proclaimed the reference implementation. The winning student
team, formed by Ricardo Aguirre Reyes, Andrea Graziano, Marco Teoli,
and Alberto Zuccato, received a laminated Ada Way Award donated by
Ada-Europe to commend the outstanding quality of their submission.

In evaluating the authors' submission the evaluation committee
reported: "This implementation of the Ada Way Soccer Simulation reveals
extraordinary care and engineering skill, and represents a working,
scalable, well-documented, and well-structured solution. From reading
the technical documentation, it is clear that the development team
faced many challenges, and in every case determined an appropriate
solution through a combination of thoughtful analysis, experimentation,
and clever design." The story of their implementation will be told in
a forthcoming issue of the Ada User Journal, the quarterly magazine
of Ada-Europe. In due course, the winning team will receive all
elements of the prize attached to their fine achievement.

Today, Ada-Europe is pleased to announce that the full source
of the reference implementation is posted on the Ada Way page,
www.ada-europe.org/AdaWay, along with its accompanying technical
specification, user manual and build instructions, a short demo video
clip and an image of the award.

The reference implementation is now proposed for a "Try and Beat Me"
open-ended challenge: any student team willing to take that challenge
is invited to make a submission that attempts to improve over the
reference implementation under any of the evaluation criteria listed
on the Ada Way page. On 15 May of every year, any such new submission
will be evaluated and the best one will be awarded a minor prize and
will replace the previous reference submission in the continuation
of the try-and-beat-me challenge.

The evaluation will be performed by a team of distinguished Ada
experts comprised of: John Barnes (author of the famous Programming in
Ada books), S. Tucker Taft (leader of the Ada 95 language revision),
Pascal Leroy (leader of the Ada 2005 language revision), Ed Schonberg
(co-author of the open-source GNAT Ada compiler and toolset),
Joyce Tokar (convenor of the ISO working group on the Ada language
standards), etc.

The winning team will be announced at the Ada-Europe yearly conference
subsequent to the cut-off date at which submissions entered the
challenge. The prize for this challenge includes a framed award,
an Ada book of choice, visibility in electronic and printed media,
one free registration and a monetary grant of up to EUR 1000 for
the winning team to use for collective participation at any future
Ada-Europe conference of choice within two calendar years after
selection for the prize.

Ada-Europe wants the competition to be fun and instructive. The
implementation does not need to be 100% Ada, but the essence must
of course be. Tullio Vardanega, president of Ada-Europe, stated:
"The winning submission must be a reference for good Ada programming,
software design, and innovation."

For all details, please refer to the official web page of "The Ada
Way", www.ada-europe.org/AdaWay.

About Ada-Europe

Ada-Europe is the international non-profit organization that
promotes the knowledge and use of the Ada programming language in
academia, research and industry in Europe. Its flagship event is
the annual international Ada-Europe conference on reliable software
technologies, a high-quality technical and scientific event that
has been successfully running in the current format for the last 17
years. Ada-Europe has member organizations all over the continent,
in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland,
as well as individual members in many other countries. For more
information about Ada-Europe, its charter, activities and sponsors,
please visit its web site.

A PDF version of this press release is available at www.ada-europe.org.

Press contact
Dirk Craeynest, Ada-Europe Vice-President, D...@c...kuleuven.be

(AW3.3)

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