Ada didn't take off (despite some decent level of enthusiasm in the industry) because a compiler cost $$$$. That's also why Smalltalk failed to gain traction.

Ada didn't take off (despite some decent level of enthusiasm in the industry) because a compiler cost $$$$. That's also why Smalltalk failed to gain traction. I suppose both languages hailed from an era in which employers did still provide training - say up to the late 80s, maybe even early 90s. The idea that programmers would need to learn languages on their own time/dime never even occurred to those vendors.