Salute!
From Wiki:
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ada compilers had improved in performance, but there were still barriers to full exploitation of Ada's abilities, including a tasking model that was different from what most real-time programmers were used to.
[9]
The Department of Defense Ada mandate was effectively removed in 1997, as the DoD began to embrace COTS (
commercial off-the-shelf) technology. Similar requirements existed in other
NATO countries.
Not that Wiki is the end all authority, but I saw the reluctance of our software folks to embrace Ada back in late 80's and early 90's when developing systems for several military programs.
Granted, the compilers produced huge bytes of executable code. Tasking models by the compiler folks needed work to achieve the goals of the software engineers that developed Ada.
What I saw with DoD sfwe generally agrees with Wiki to some extent when I see the quoted text above.
The software folks couldn't get used to rigid definitions and typing. They did not like being handed a specification for an Ada package to be integrated in an existing system or a new one. We systems engineer folks said, "just do it", and we already have the overall sfwe for the project. They wanted "ownership".
Gums dons kevlar vest, looks for bomb shelter......
Loopholes allowed the "C" mafia to get into the process. So by early 90's, a lotta embedded computer sfwe stuff was not in Ada-compiled code.
Gotta tellya that it drove we systems engineers crazy in the "murder board" meetings. "lost pointers", huh? Case-sensitive variables and poorly designed calls to packages/subroutines, and the beat went on.
Fer chrissakes, all we wanted was modular and transportable code modules to get plug-and-play capability for basic aircraft avionics functions.
Sorry to rant, but sometimes I think a sfwe function coded in assembler would have been be easier to test and verify than the compiled code from "C++" or whatever.
back to my cave, now, as the press is now focusing upon "deep stall" and such. And my pea-brained background causes me to wonder how a system that works as advertised can allow ( maybe even cause) the confused aircrew to wind up in a loss of control accident. I thought all those control laws and sub-laws, and sub-sub-laws would help just a bit.