> Ada was a complicated and rigid language designed by a Department of Defense committee Ada was designed by Jean Ichbiah, and although there was a committee h

> Ada was a complicated and rigid language designed by a Department of Defense committee Ada was designed by Jean Ichbiah, and although there was a committee he did override them on multiple occasions. So not really a design-by-committee. The reasons it got no traction were: it was too complex/heavyweight, and too dissimilar to C to warrant a change (businesses waited for C++ instead, since it was around the corner at that time); due to its complexity it took a while for certified compilers to show up, and when they did they were quite expensive. Since it was properly established in high margin markets, the community (mainly AdaCore, since they are the main compiler vendor) did little to improve its standing -- the only open-source projects they have pushed are all under GPLv3, which is not going to help with its popularity (not a judgement on GPLv3, it's just that basic lib are almost always under more liberal licenses, e.g. Boost). It really feels as if these OSS projects were pushed only to attract new programmers, while trying to prevent[1] an actual independent community from springing up. Odd behaviour. Every 6 months or so someone on HN or Reddit posts an Ada article that get people's interest, and then they discover they cannot write their project with it due to its licensing. [1]: "...it is the intention of the GPL distribution of GNAT to restrict your freedom" in: http://libre.adacore.com/tools/gnat-gpl-edition/faq/ http://libre.adacore.com/tools/gnat-gpl-edition/faq/