[WastingMyTime89]

Ada was released in 1980. It finally got a free compiler when the Air Force paid for one in 1995 fifteen years later and it took until 2001 for this code to finally be merged with the rest of GCC.

It definitely had no free compiler for a long time.

[Jtsummers]

That it took 16 years to develop a free compiler for a relatively niche language in the era when relatively few people were online yet in any meaningful sense is not terribly shocking.

The language, going with the date of the first spec, is now 41 years old. So 25 years of its existence, there has been a free compiler. Quite a bit longer than the time spent without one.