Re:shhh! don't go blabbing this all over the place (Score 1)

Finally, apart from inheritance, even Ada83 supported all the other features of OO to some extent.

That's like saying C is OOP because it has structures and linkable modules.

Err - no - it isn't!

Ada 83 didn't bring anything to the OOP party besides abstraction/data hiding, and even then it didn't do it very well.

What makes you say that? What problem do you have with Ada83's abstraction/data hiding that hasn't been improved in Ada95/05?

I pray for the sake of all remaining Ada programmers that '95 fixed all the problems I found, but Ada '83 was a bucket of crap.

So you're basing your opinion of a current language version on one that is 24 years old? Have you tried the first version of C?

BTW, the project in the OP succeeded, but I can point to a few high-profile failures using Ada here in Australia. The combat system for locally made submarines and a system for the Queensland betting agency. They were all pre-95 so maybe they should have waited for the technology to mature before jumping in. I certainly wish we had.

Was their failure proven to be as a result of the choice of language? Or was it that the original requirement was poorly specified, analysed and understood?