Ada (not ADA) was largely the product of one man, Jean Ichbiah. The notion that it's some kind of commitee-created monstrosity seems largely to have come from

Ada (not ADA) was largely the product of one man, Jean Ichbiah. The notion that it's some kind of commitee-created monstrosity seems largely to have come from ESR's wildly inaccurate writeup of it in the Hacker's Dictionary. It's actually a fairly small and nice language. The object oriented extensions didn't follow the "standard" Java "." syntax, though, which probably hurt Ada 95's uptake more than it should have.