They don't release standards in rapid succession but 'Ada 2012' has pretty much all of the features that people were asking for in C++ since 2011.
The only issue (on top of the obvious lack of coolness and hype around it) is that professional grade Ada compilers/toolchain are still quite a high cost for single developers or small companies. AdaCore's business model is still pretty much focused on support contracts to big Aerospace/ATC/Defense clients.
Many of AdaCore's "community" versions are the full compiler and if they dont have builds available for your bareboard arch you can build it yourself or get one from gcc.
The only difference is that use of the special "GNAT.X" packages outside the standard runtime are under a GPL restriction and you would be required to export those dependencies as a separate lib and do open dev on it.
Otherwise you are free to sell or keep any trade secrets you want without giving AdaCore anything.
My comment was more addressing the general public misconceptions of the language. I showed some of my teammates the work I've been doing in it and they were shocked, expecting the language to look like COBOL. When I reference "today's standards", I was referring to the kinds of modern features people expect from a newer language.
I haven't had too many problems using the community version of Gnat made by AdaCore, but I share many people's concerns with the main toolchain being developed by a private enterprise who commercialise it. The version of GCC bundled with Fedora Linux IIRC had an Ada toolchain out of the box too.
The lack of runtime support for a wide range of architectures/boards was a bit of a bummer, but that's just a function of it's popularity I guess.
You make it sound like Ada stopped in the 80's.
They don't release standards in rapid succession but 'Ada 2012' has pretty much all of the features that people were asking for in C++ since 2011.
The only issue (on top of the obvious lack of coolness and hype around it) is that professional grade Ada compilers/toolchain are still quite a high cost for single developers or small companies. AdaCore's business model is still pretty much focused on support contracts to big Aerospace/ATC/Defense clients.