[cashsterling]

Yeah... my intro CS class was in C and Ada95 (I'm not a CS guy btw, just took the class). I actually preferred Ada over C... but continued to program in C for other classes because of compiler availability; I had to do all my Ada programming on Sparc workstations at school.

I personally think that AdaCore, and friends, missed an opportunity in the early 2000's to fully embrace open source... they left a big gap which Rust has filled nicely.

I still think Ada is a great programming language. When a question comes up along the lines of: "what's the best programming language nobody's heard of?", or "what's the best programming language that is under used?" Ada is usually my first answer. I think other good answers include F#, <insert LISP flavor>, Odin, Prolog, Haxe, and Futhark (if you're into that sort of thing).

[pjmlp]

We are on Ada 202x nowadays being discussed, and in a world where FOSS tool makers have problems making a sustainable business, always changing licenses, there are still 7 Ada vendors selling compilers.

[ummonk]

And only AdaCore / GNAT will ever support Ada 202x. The language has left the legacy vendors behind.

[anthk]

Libre compilers do not impose restrictions on output.

[fpoling]

In embedded world restrictions on the output is the last thing of worries while fulfilling various certification requirements can be a big and costly headache.

And from the vendor point of view releasing a compiler under libre license allows for concurrents to undercut one on R&D leading to the compiler and related tools certification. So from business point of view it just makes no sense. This is very different from contributing to, say, clang, where a cost of maintaining own closed fork outweighs any disadvantages of contributing.

[pjmlp]

As long as there are enough people around to actually work on them.