Comment by bdavis__

Many of the 'programmers' of those days lacked the sophistication and education to appreciate Ada.

Just the mojo required to print an integer (having to instantiate a generic) was considered complicated

Ada was also very slow to compile, on the order of 10 times slower than Jovial. (my experiences)

Avionics systems back then were tiny. Jovial usually ran on a 16 bit processor.

Ada enabled a certain maturity and correctness to the avionics domain.