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Not only ADA itself is far from dead. PL/SQL is a descendent of Ada and a niche language used in the Oracle RDBMS, but it has a TIOBE index of 18.

Don't forget that Apple was a heavy Pascal user in the 80s. Wirth designed Clascal (used with the Apple Lisa computer) for them, which then got morphed into Object Pascal for the Mac. Many applications were written in Object Pascal. Apple developed Lisa Toolkit (an application framework) for Clascal. This was then morphed into MacApp for Object Pascal.

Interesting, I remember reading (maybe just the name) Clascal back in the day, did not know that it morphed into Object Pascal or that Wirth worked on it.

Ada is a Pascal dialect? How do you figure? (If you mean "somewhat in the Pascal flavor", I might be able to see it...)

A more C-like syntax, with a more Pascal-like semantics, might actually be a reasonable sweet spot. (I think the C syntax won for a reason. It's terser, without being so terse it's unreadable, and therefore gives you higher bandwidth. Most peoples' complaints about C are the semantics, not the syntax - though I'm sure at least some people dislike that too...)

While Ada is not formally a Pascal dialect, it arguably has more influence from Pascal than from the earlier ALGOL (which also influenced Pascal; it has keywords like PROCEDURE, BEGIN and END) and Simula. A Pascal-family developer can more easily pick up Ada than, say, a C programmer; the Pascal family already has TYPE, VAR, ranges, records, etc.

From the 1983 Ada reference manual [1]:

    Another significant simplification of the design work
    resulted from earlier experience acquired by several
    successful Pascal derivatives developed with similar
    goals. These are the languages Euclid, Lis, Mesa,
    Modula, and Sue. Many of the key ideas and syntactic
    forms developed in these languages have counterparts
    in Ada. Several existing languages such as Algol 68
    and Simula, and also recent research languages such
    as Alphard and Clu, influenced this language in
    several respects, although to a lesser degree than
    did the Pascal family.

Ada was widely considered as being an evolution of Pascal at the time (e.g. [2]).

[1] http://archive.adaic.com/standards/83lrm/html/lrm-01-03.html

[2] https://academic.oup.com/comjnl/article-pdf/25/2/248/1080494...

It's Wirthian with sane precedence for the and/or operators.

Neither the article, nor your comment provide any substantial arguments, why the language itself should be perceived as a "jewel". All you have is just some references to inspiring success stories and an appeal to authority. What is cool about Oberon, really? (Apart your Wirth-fandom)

> why... "jewel"

Worth having a look at.

>> why... "jewel" >Worth having a look at.

Nice one, actually :) The main thing people do with jewels is look at them (apart from keeping them as a store of value).