ABSTRACT
The development of the Ada programming language during the late 1970s and early 1980s, is a demonstration of the serious efforts undertaken by the software engineering community to encourage a more professional approach to software development. Within the Ada programming language, analogy to the hardware component is realised in the form of the package. This construct allows a data structure and the operations which can be performed upon it to be combined into a single unit; the actual implementation of the data structure and the associated operations are kept separate and are maintained within a package body. In Ada, are able to support component plugs by the use of generics. This construct improves the flexibility and adaptability of the package by providing a template which may be parameterised. The generic component can then be instantiated by a user to create a customised subprogram or package.
