http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2009/03/thales-cho...
This is just one example from many I can pick up, this one is Java, but there are systems done in other GC languages as well.
But I do agree it is a matter of hardware resources and if hard or soft real time guarantees are to be expected, just that not all embedded systems require real time processing.
In that sense, one could also use Go. But that is a bleak argument.
I'm aware of the existence of "real time Java". There can be such a thing because of specifications like " areas of memory that are not subject to garbage collection, along with threads that are not preemptable by the garbage collector" [1]. Like I said... guarantees....
There are embedded systems being coded in Basic, Oberon, Lisp, Scheme and .NET.
Although those systems are usually 32 bit based. 8 and 16 bit systems are too small for those languages.
Ada suffered from lack of available cheap compilers back in the 80's, and like Turbo Pascal and Modula-2 it was a victim of UNIX's success, which had the sad side effect of promoting C for systems programming, with all security issues we have nowadays.
Now with the work of GNAT Core, and more security conscious developers, Ada seems to be getting new users, at least here in Europe as more universities adopt it. It is already a constant presence at FOSDEM in the last few years.
http://e.ubmelectronics.com/audience/eetnewsletters/02-19-20...
That's a good time to advertise for http://www.ada-europe2013.org/ in June. :)