Many factors but one is interesting: the existence of a public test suite, ACATS http://www.ada-auth.org/acats.html http://www.ada-auth.org/acats.html This is

Many factors but one is interesting: the existence of a public test suite, ACATS http://www.ada-auth.org/acats.html http://www.ada-auth.org/acats.html This is a good thing to have a test suite for a language but from a business perspective it increases barrier to entry, why? 1/ you start your new compiler with 10000 bugs (the failing tests in the public test suite) 2/ you get no client since clients want a compiler passing the public test suite 3/ no client means no money and this until you fix the 10000 bugs. With programming languages that do not have a credible public test suite you can get away with shipping the compiler ASAP and get money from customers, then concentrate on fixing customer impacting bugs. All in all a blessing and a curse, life is full of compromises :)