Jean David Ichbiah (25 March 1940 – 26 January 2007)[1] was a French computer scientist. From 1977 to 1983, he was the chief designer of Ada, a general-purpose, strongly typed programming language with certified validated compilers.[1]
Jean David Ichbiah | |
|---|---|
 Jean Ichbiah 1989-90, picture for ALSYS | |
| Born | 25 March 1940 |
| Died | 26 January 2007 (aged 66) |
| Occupation | computer scientist Executive Director Alsys |
| Known for | chief designer (1977–1983) of the Ada programming language[1] |
Early life
editIchbiah was a descendant of Greek and Turkish Jews[1][2] from Thessaloniki who emigrated to France.[3]
Career
editIn 1980, he founded the Company Alsys. From 1972 to 1974, he worked on designing an experimental system implementation language called LIS, based on Pascal and Simula.[4] 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.[5]
He then joined CII Honeywell Bull (CII-HB) in Louveciennes, France, becoming a member of the Programming Research division.[1] Among other projects, he worked on the rewrite of the Siris 7 operating system into Siris 8 computer restructuring Iris 80 .
Ichbiah's team submitted a language design labelled "Green" to a competition to choose the United States Department of Defense's embedded programming language. When Green was selected in 1978, he continued as chief designer of the language, now named "Ada". In 1980, Ichbiah left CII-HB and founded the Alsys corporation[1] in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, which continued language definition to standardize Ada 83,[1] and later went into the Ada compiler business, also supplying special validated compiler systems to NASA, the US Army, and others. He later moved to the Waltham, Massachusetts subsidiary of Alsys.
In the 1990s, Ichbiah designed the keyboard layout FITALY, 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 PCs, as well as text-entry software for medical transcription on PCs.
Awards and honors
editIn 1979, Jean Ichbiah was designated a chevalier (knight) of the French Legion of Honour[1] and a correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences. He received a Certificate of Distinguished Service from the United States Department of Defense for his work on Ada.
Death
editJean Ichbiah died from complications of a brain tumor on January 26, 2007.[6]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f g h "Jean Ichbiah (1940–2007)", Ada Information Clearinghouse, 2007 AdaIC.
- ^ Colmerauer, Alain (July 2007). "In memoriam, Jean ICHBIAH" (in French). Archived from the original on 2015-05-03. Retrieved 2015-04-22.
- ^ Jean Ichbiah. "Disappointed by lack of localization/customization capabilities". Retrieved 2007-02-13.
...my mother was born in Saloniki
- ^ "Software at Bull". Archived from the original on 2011-07-10. Retrieved 2010-07-13.
LIS was an experimental implementation language designed by Jean Ichbiah on Siris8. LIS was not used on commercial CII products. LIS was inspired by Pascal and Simula and has contributed to the definition of Ada.
- ^ Gerhard Goos. "The Beginning of IFIP Working Group 2.4". Retrieved 2007-02-13.
- ^ Joyce Tokar (2007-01-28). "In Remembrance of Jean Ichbiah". Newsgroup: comp.lang.ada. Usenet: [email protected]. Retrieved 31 January 2007.
Further reading
edit- Jean Ichbiah (October 1984). "Ada: Past, Present, Future — An Interview with Jean Ichbiah, the Principal Designer of Ada". Communications of the ACM. 27 (10): 990–997. doi:10.1145/358274.358278. S2CID 11152781.
External links
edit- 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, as published in SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes
- Jean Ichbiah, 66; designed landmark computer language (Boston Globe)
- Ada inventor Jean Ichbiah dies (Computerworld)
- Member of the French Academy of Sciences (in French)
- Ada 83 designer Jean Ichbiah dies, Ada User's Journal, Ada-Europe 2007