3rd Ada Developers Workshop

12 June 2026, Västerås, Sweden

Co-located with the 30th Ada-Europe International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies (AEiC 2026), June 9-12

As in its previous editions, the 3rd Ada Developers Workshop aims to create an informal yet dynamic platform for developers in the Ada community to meet, share insights, and present their latest projects or project updates, using the Ada programming language and Ada-related technology such as SPARK. The topics will range from community advocacy all the way to technical presentations. The focus of the Developers Workshop will be on topics and projects that are widely used within the community and which help grow the Ada pool of users and the quality of life of existing programmers.

AEiC 2026 is an ideal fit for an Ada Developers Workshop. On the one hand, it gives the general community an opportunity to see what is happening in the Ada world and how Ada can help to produce reliable and efficient open software. On the other hand, it gives Ada projects an opportunity to showcase themselves, get feedback and ideas, and attract participants to their project and collaboration between projects.

Normally, entrance to AEiC costs a bit of money, however, similar to previous editions, the organisers are working hard to ensure once more that the Ada Developers Workshop will have a substantially reduced entry fee. The workshop will be on Friday, which should be a more convenient day for visitors and speakers with regards to accommodation, traveling costs, taking some days off from work, and having some extra time to visit Västerås or Stockholm during the weekend. However, if in-person attendance is not possible, note that the entire workshop will be live-streamed and recorded, and online participation will be supported.

Thanks to sponsoring (Ada-Europe, AdaCore, Ada-Belgium and Ada-France), in-person participants (first 20) will only pay €20 for early registration or €30 for late registration. After 20 participants, due to Ada-Europe sponsorship, the registration is €90. Remote participants are required to register as well, but participation will be totally free.

Presentations & Schedule

We are pleased to present the list of presentations for the 3rd Ada Developers Workshop, held on Friday 13 June 2026 at the 30th Ada-Europe International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies (AEiC 2026).

The full-day program is packed with 7 technical presentations on various Ada-related topics and 8 authors from 8 countries: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, France, India, Spain, Switzerland and USA. All time slots include Q&A. There will be extra time for participant interactions in between talks, and during breaks and lunch. At the end of the day, there will be time for an open discussion (includding online participants).

  • 09:00-09:10 (10 min.)
    Fernando Oleo Blanco (Spain), Fabien Chouteau (France), Dirk Craeynest (Belgium)
    "Welcome to the Ada Developers Workshop"

  • 09:15-09:35 (20 min.)
    Olivier Henley (Canada)
    "Ada-Awesome: A Crowd-Kept Catalog"

    Abstract: “Awesome lists” are a known open-source pattern for curating resources on a topic. Their value comes from staying current. Ada-Awesome applies this to the Ada ecosystem. It is a versioned catalog of libraries, tools, frameworks, and references, maintained openly. Accuracy does not require a heavy process. People hit broken links or outdated entries and send pull requests on GitHub. Those small, continuous fixes keep the list aligned with reality. This talk examines how a simple Git repository can serve as a lightweight community infrastructure, and how uncoordinated contributions converge into a reliable shared index.

    Presenter: Olivier Henley is a Senior Software Engineer and GNAT Academic Program (GAP) Coordinator at AdaCore, where he runs academic programs and partnerships. He maintains Ada-Awesome and is active in Ada community efforts both inside and outside AdaCore.

  • 09:40-10:30 (50 min.)
    Aldo Nicolas Bruno (Argentina)
    "A Native, Portable GUI Framework for Ada"

    Abstract: Adi2 is a desktop GUI framework written in Ada. It lets you build native windowed applications with the usual widgets such as buttons, text fields, lists, dialogs, sliders, stacks, and an HTML view, styled with CSS and laid out in XML in a way that feels familiar to modern web development. The GUI is kept highly portable by relying on SDL_Renderer, which can take advantage of accelerated graphics. It supports modern styling features such as CSS drop shadows, gradients, and transitions, as well as scalable graphics through SVG. During development, stylesheets reload live as you edit them; for release, both CSS and XML are compiled into Ada so the final binary contains no external resource files. The goal is a batteries-included, themeable GUI stack where the authoring experience is familiar and the application remains plain Ada. In this session, we will build a small Adi2 application from an empty project to a running, styled window, wiring an XML layout, a CSS stylesheet, a set of widgets, and a few callbacks. Along the way, we will examine how the CSS to Ada and XML to Ada generators turn the UI into a fully static Ada program, with no runtime parsing or dynamic loading, and how the retained-mode widget tree minimizes rendering work by updating only when necessary. We will also explore the development workflow, including style cascade, transitions, and live reload during editing. Finally, we will integrate an LLM through Adi2’s MCP server, exposing the live widget tree, screenshots, and performance data, allowing the model to inspect the running application and propose changes. This enables an AI-assisted authoring loop where the developer and model iterate together on the UI. Attendees will leave with a working example, a clear understanding of the XML + CSS + Ada workflow, and a practical approach to using LLMs as a co-author for Ada GUI development.

    Presenter: Aldo is a software and electronics engineer who started programming and studying electronics at an early age, exploring Visual Basic and low-level PIC assembly, and continued as a self-taught developer working with C and C++ in systems and embedded contexts. Later pursued formal studies before moving into a professional role. Since 2009, he has been running an independent business focused on software and embedded systems development, mainly in the automotive diagnostics domain, designing and delivering software and hardware solutions ranging from low-level programming and communication protocols to full applications, using technologies such as C++, Qt, SQL, and modern backend frameworks. He has maintained a long-standing interest in Ada, and recently started adopting it in production systems. His interests include system architecture, embedded development, and user interface frameworks.

  • 10:30-11:00 (30 min.)
    Break

  • 11:00-11:35 (35 min.)
    Jeffrey R. Carter (USA)
    "Z Compression"

    Abstract: Z Compression is a standalone, all-Ada implementation of the Zlib Deflate compression and Inflate decompression algorithms, originally implemented by Gautier de Montmollin for Zip-Ada. I will discuss the history of the implementation, the motivation for creating Z Compression, and its use, presenting Arch, an archive manager. Z Compression is pure, portable Ada 12, tested with two different compilers on two operating systems.

    Presenter: Jeffrey R. Carter began working with computers in 1975, using FORTRAN-66 on punched cards (it was always written FORTRAN because the key punches only had capital letters). Later he got to know Pascal. In 1984 he met Ada, and the rest is history.

  • 11:40-12:30 (50 min.)
    Divyá Ranjan (India) online presentation
    "Responding to Dijkstra: How Modern Ada/SPARK Pioneers Correctness by Construction"

    Abstract: Dijkstra has been one of the oldest & strongest proponents for the Correct by Construction approach to programming. Despite his several attemptts, Dijkstra was disappointed by the industrial computing of his time for its lack of emphasis on correctness. His initial impression of Ada during its conception was also rather negative with regards to Ada's complexity. He was not alone, colleagues of Dijkstra such as Hoare and Wirth had similar complaints from Ada despite being really interested in the language. This talk would present a bit of this history and then respond to these criticisms with descriptive demonstrations. Overall, I plan to show that modern Ada/SPARK very closely fits the programming environment that Dijkstra, et. al had in mind. I will contrast this by showcasing the limitations of other modern langauges such as Lean4 when constructing formally verified software. In conclusion, the talk will summarize features of Ada/SPARK we have today that are taken for granted.

    Presenter: I am Divya. Currently working as an independent cryptographer. I've previously worked in formal verification with Lean4 and post-quantum cryptography. I am an ardent supporter of Free Software & also a contributor to several free software projects such as GNU Emacs & GNU Guix.

  • 12:30-14:00 (90 min.)
    Lunch

  • 14:00-14:20 (20 min.)
    Fernando Oleo Blanco (Spain)
    "Ada User Awards: financially revitalizing the Ada ecosystem"

    Abstract: The Ada User Society has launched a new program to encourage a greater participation and involment of the Ada community in the wider Ada ecosystem. During this presentation we will introduce what is it about, how does it work, what is the future and what are the expected outcomes of the program. Do not miss it, as anybody is eligible to potentially receive some funding for their proposals!

    Presenter: Fernando Oleo Blanco (Irvise on the net) is a young engineer fascinated by libre software and mechanical engineering. Currently, he is working in the energy sector, focusing mostly in the nuclear world, with projects related to both fusion energy and Gen IV nuclear reactors. At an early age, his passion of libre software soon met his studies in engineering and both sides have been complementing each other ever since. The software communities he is involved mostly with are CAD/FEM/CFD software, Ada and Scheme. Additionally, he is always happy to help people learn about software and spread the word on the libre philosophy. However, mechanical engineering is not all: operating systems, music, art, decentralization, rogelikes and unrestricted access to information are also part of his interests.

  • 14:30-14:55 (25 min.)
    Cristian Simon (Spain)
    "Ironclad: 2026's state of the union"

    Abstract: Ironclad is a formally verified, hard real-time capable kernel for general-purpose and embedded uses, written in SPARK and Ada. It is comprised of 100% free software. This talk will delve on progress on the project since its 2024 AEiC presentation, including its progress in virtualization, real time computing, and networking, alongside organizational aspects of the project, and feature a technical showcase of the project running Gloire, Ironclad's reference distribution.

    Presenter: Cristian Simon is a software developer and free software lover. For the better part of a decade I have been deep into the free software side of embedded development, working on several operating system kernels, bootloaders, and other low-level userland utilities widely used by the community at large.

  • 15:05-15:30 (25 min.)
    Ahlan Marriott (Switzerland)
    "Controlling a telescope auto-focuser using software written in Ada with the help of ChatGpt!"

    Abstract: The presentation describes how what should have been a simple addition to an existing telescope control system became a lot more complicated due to a hardware compatibility issue. The solution required expertise that the author did not have on an unfamiliar platform. Fortunately ChatGPT was able to guide the author and help write the required code - all in Ada!

    Presenter: Ahlan Marriott will give the presentation on behalf of this colleague who unfortunately cannot attend this year’s conference. Ahlan is an enthusiastic supporter of the Ada programming language who uses Ada both professionally as well as for non-commercial applications. He is president of Ada Switzerland and Treasurer of both Ada-Europe and the Ada User Society.

  • 15:30-16:00 (30 min.)
    Break

  • 16:00-17:00+ (60+ min.)
    "Open Discussions and Closing Remarks"

    Abstract: As a closing event, the community will be given a chance to present or discuss their topics of interest. Online participants are encouraged also to take part!

Call for Presentations

We would like to schedule technical presentations, tutorials, demos, live performances, project status reports, discussions, etc, in the Ada Developers Workshop.

Do you have a talk you want to give? Do you have a project you would like to present? Would you like to get more people involved with your project?

We're inviting proposals that are related to Ada software development, and include a technical oriented discussion. You're not limited to slide presentations, of course. Be creative. Propose something fun to share with people so they might feel some of your enthusiasm for Ada!

Default speaking slots are around 30 minutes. However, we may allow for some flexibility in order to fit shorter lightning talks as well as longer tutorials, demonstrations and discussions. Proposals for longer talks should be strongly motivated (e.g. 2 speakers or extensive topic). All presentations should reserve at least 5 minutes for Q&A, meaning that the content should, in principle, last up-to 25 minutes (by default).

Note that all talks will be streamed live (audio+video). After the streaming of the talk, a live Q&A session will take place. By submitting a proposal, you agree to being recorded and streamed. You also agree that the contents of your talk will be published under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA 4.0) license. Submission of the slides (if any are used) will be a requirement.

Online presentations will also be accepted, however, preference will be given to speakers present in the venue. If you would like to give an online talk, you will be asked to do a pre-recording and submit it some time before AEiC starts, to be used in case the Internet connection does not work as expected.

Submission Guidelines

In order to submit a proposal for a talk, please, email the three organisers, Fernando, Fabien and Dirk (email down below) with the following information:

  • your name, affiliation, contact info;
  • the title of your talk (be descriptive and creative);
  • a short descriptive and attractive abstract;
  • potentially pointers to more information;
  • a short bio and photo;
  • indicate whether you will be presenting online or in person.

Take a look at programs of the previous Ada Developers Workshops [1-2] and recent Ada DevRooms held at FOSDEM [3] and [4-9] for presentation examples, as well as for the kind of info we need. Also, feel free to have discussions over at Ada-Lang's forum [10]!

Here is the slightly flexible schedule that we will follow:

  • Sun April 19, 2026: end of round 1 of the submission period.
    Remember, we only need the information in the list above. You do not have to submit the entire talk by this date. Try to submit your proposal as early as possible. Acceptance decisions may be made on a rolling basis, so do not wait for the last minute. Nevertheless, if you are a bit late, submit anyway and message irvise@irvise.xyz directly.
  • Sun April 26, 2026: first announcement of accepted speakers and talks.
  • Fri June 5, 2026: your slides should be uploaded.
  • Fri June 12, 2026: 3rd Ada Developers Workshop day!

We look forward to lots of feedback and proposals!

Organizers

  • Fernando Oleo Blanco, Libre Ada Software Aficionado, irvise@irvise.xyz
  • Fabien Chouteau, AdaCore, chouteau@adacore.com
  • Dirk Craeynest, Ada-Belgium & KU Leuven, dirk.craeynest@cs.kuleuven.be

Links