[jeff95350]

"I'd rather have the Space Shuttle's control software written in Ada than Java."

That's what I was thinking, too. Was Ada really meant for "other people" to use? I wonder how many people involved in the process went on to write Ada afterward?

I don't know the facts, but I would guess that the critical system software writers in the US are a fairly small group, and anyone on that committee knew they would end up writing a lot of Ada afterward.

I doubt it was the same kind of "make a language for the masses" simply because there aren't masses of people capable of writing software for critical systems. I would guess that it had more to do with a mutual pact: programmers have to add extra annotation for interfaces and constraints; but in return they can absolutely rely on those interfaces and constraints because they know that the compiler enforces them.