@Coldtea had it right - I meant it has many concepts that are new to the most popular platforms. For example C# is very popular, but what it has of these featu

@Coldtea had it right - I meant it has many concepts that are new to the most popular platforms. For example C# is very popular, but what it has of these features has trickled in slowly over the years and many .NET programmers have had no need to master them, same with Java. Ada was a beautiful design for its time. Maybe its most fundamental flaw was government oversight. So much about designing a widely successful language is non-technical, choosing the right features, trends, hardware, that builds enough momentum to support a self-sustaining ecosystem. To do so often requires an agility that the DOD just doesn't have. Ada is one of so many examples that reminds us technical superiority commonly loses out to pragmatism. I do like the name, it would have been fascinating to know Ada Lovelace.