not just the priorities, the overall skill and education of programmers.
in the 1980/1990's i was a dumb kid. problems of large systems were not in my mind. having to type begin/end instead of {} was, i thought, a valid complaint.
with experience, education, and hindsight, most of the advantages of the ada language were not understood by the masses. if ada came out today, it would have taken off just like rust.