- Complex language that isn't matched with an equally complex language standard (a lot of undefined behaviors or gaps where things are not explained as fully as they could be, but I don’t remember any specific instances, so maybe I'm crazy on this one)
- Too many situations with the syntax where you can do something only in certain situations, or the opposite. From what I see the only possible reason why in these bizarre situations is to lower the complexity of the compiler. For example, why can't I put a package instance in an array, when the generic package features are so strong that they can be pretty much (ab)used as object oriented structs. Try to search in Barnes' Ada book for terms like, only when, except when, however.
- Reuse of keywords that mean very different or slightly different things in one context versus another. An example would be delay, two lines of code might say delay 10, one actually means sleep the task for 10 seconds, the other means goto the next line of code if one of the previous points of entry in the lines above is called.
- The ability to tiptoe very easily around the safety mechanics of the language and start using it as if it was C, which is very tempting for two reasons: 1. Most programmers programming Ada were/are from a C background and the first things they pick up on are the ways to do things in Ada like you could in C while never moving on past that. It makes sort of sense to not move pass that if you aren't given time to fully digest the Ada way of doing things. 2. Takes less lines of code to program something up if you ignore the all the safety features that language can provide. I would have not allowed the ability to ignore all the things that make Ada stand out. It makes sense to not use Ada for any development, because programming C in Ada is going to be slower than programming C in C any day of the week.
- Hacked on OO. Can hardly find any Ada code online using OO language features added in Ada 95, but that makes sense because it's a bunch of keyword boilerplate on top of the existing records that's very unwieldy to use and ugly.
On the topic of Ada not taking off, I think one big reason why Ada can't take off the ground right now is that you can't find anything online about it. Try to search for some question you have, you'll find no answers, search the same question but pertaining to the Java or C version, and you’ll get a bunch of answers, blogs, even unanswered questions, Ada lacks that web presence greatly. Where are people going to talk about Ada and develop modern tools for it and frameworks in it if such places don’t exist? (comp.lang.ada is the only location on the internet with an active Ada community) It seems like that can only appear out of thin air if the language is new, where a sudden influx of many individuals feel like they can contribute where their energies are combined together, but if you get an individual here and there that wants to help out, but their energies are separated by one week or one month, then nothing for Ada will ever come about.
On the topic of concurrency, you may want to look into Ada on that too, concurrent structures are baked into the syntax of the Ada language, and can be quite complex/powerful/concise.