[tombert]

Failed in the sense that it doesn't appear to be used anymore.

C and C++ are still used pretty frequently. I wouldn't say that they failed, but if someone wrote an application in Ada in 2025, I would find that a bit anachronistic.

[thesuperbigfrog]

>> if someone wrote an application in Ada in 2025, I would find that a bit anachronistic.

I suppose that Nvidia's use of Ada and SPARK for self-driving vehicles is anachronistic:

https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/nvidia-drives-ada-and-spark-...

https://nvidia.github.io/spark-process/process/introduction....

[jksmith]

Forgive, but that smells of youth and recency bias. How do you judge lisp and k/qdb? Is C# the best language? Is Nim anachronistic? How would you write a desktop app using your exact same codebase on Win, Linux, Mac? That would be Free Pascal. Or maybe the desktop is now anachronistic, even though it still produces a richer UX.

Many languages have their great qualities. Whether or not they're outdated is a determination full of biases. Measure the language choice against resources and potential revenue. I'd be happy to write an app in Ada to proclaim its advantages as a sales pitch.

[tombert]

Maybe "failed" is a strong word.

I just don't see Ada used a lot anymore. This isn't a value judgement on it being "good" or "bad", lots of bad languages (like PHP) end up getting very popular, and lots of cool languages (like Idris) kind of languish in obscurity. Don't mistake me saying popularity is proper metric for how "good" something is.

When I say "anachronistic", I don't mean it as a bad thing either, just that it's not used a lot anymore. I've literally never heard of anyone writing an Ada application in the last twenty years outside blogs on HN.

[jksmith]

I think the bias noose has tightened a lot over the years, so we don't avail ourselves to experiement like we used to - no chance for critical mass now that the profession has become so commoditized. It was wide open when I first started and devs were using all kinds of toolchains. The most money I've ever made selling applications (in today $) was from a TP (DOS) then later Delphi (Windows) codebase. Way back in 1991 I remember having a cigar with a client in SF and the dude wrote me a 70k check right there on the bar. What a huge thrill for me that was. Wild west of price and value discovery, which has totally disappeared.

One thing I do believe: the quality of software from MSFT has gone down, in part because their business model has gone from providing products to monetizing the users. Their products are just stagnant honeypots to collect data. This is opening a door for the small time dev to try new things, maybe with unpopular toolchains. I've got something that would be great for highlighting Ada's mission critical rep. Price and value discovery aren't dead (yet).

[carlmr]

Anachronistic maybe, but it would still make a lot of embedded development a whole lot easier to get right. Modern Ada has a much better set of features compared to C, doesn't have the bloat of C++, and allows much better handling of embedded issues like fixed point calculations than either of them.

It's still a very modern language which is missing very little in that niche. It's only missing adoption.

I have high hopes for Rust in this space. Using C is fine, using C++ is madness, using Ada is good but fewer available devs.

Rust also solves a lot of issues with C++ and generally, once you get past the "fighting the borrow checker" to the "working with the borrow checker" phase has insanely good ergonomica, safety mechanisms and features. Additionally Rust has momentum right now.