Of course you make a good point yourself, compilers generally weren't free (as in beer) back then. What makes Ada stand out is that it was quite a bit pricier.

Of course you make a good point yourself, compilers generally weren't free (as in beer) back then. What makes Ada stand out is that it was quite a bit pricier. The "small developer" license of AdaCore for example is $25k/year and it covers 5 seats. Hobbyists aren't going to pay that. It was 3 years after Zortech's compiler that Borland came out with their own C++ priced at $100 and was more than good enough (I don't know Zortech's pricing model to compare.) The only free Ada compiler I know of is GNAT and it's rife with issues (extremely massive binary size, even with the runtime disabled) Honestly the tooling just isn't great for the language. It's a real shame, because the subtyping system and design-through-contracts are way ahead of their time. ATS is the only other language I can think of that offers such robust safety features while also targeting the same performance as a systems lang.