I started programming in the early 80s, and never used Ada. At the time, Ada had a reputation as "that over-bloated language that people in the defense departme

I started programming in the early 80s, and never used Ada. At the time, Ada had a reputation as "that over-bloated language that people in the defense department have to use." This perhaps underserved reputation is addressed in section 7 of the linked article. From my point of view at the time, any language that the US Government would mandate as a required technology MUST be flawed. A language embraced by a large bureaucracy must be full of large bureaucratic nonsense. That was the thinking, at any rate. Ada, along with Cobol, was a frequent target of snarky jokes. In the mid-80s, the cool kids were programming in C (while being paid to program in Basic or Cobol or Fortran). I freely admit these notions were likely borne out of ignorance, but I imagine this reputation stifled its adaptation outside of government circles. Would you want to use a language mandated by the DMV?