Stanley Allen suggests we look at what would turn on the target customers for Ada. Toward this end I suggest, in the absence of more complete data, comments from folks here about how they got into using Ada and why they stayed. (Why people left Ada would be good to know too.) Introduction: In the early '80s I'd heard of Steelman, etc and went to a half-day tutorial on Ada. I'd used Burroughs Algol (with tasking), Fortran, COBOL, asm, etc. and Ada looked interesting. First use: In '88 (or so) I saw an ad for a PC Ada compiler for $99 so I bought it. I was getting into TV and rep clauses and tasking were much better than C's available features so I used my new Ada. Continued use: Having the compiler tell me of my mistakes so non-trivial programs often ran correctly once they compiled is wonderful. Ada programs are readable and Ada constructs are more powerful and at a higher abstraction level, allowing better, faster design. I now understand why people complained they couldn't understand my old, clever, C programs - and why that was a bad thing. Mine is a messy desk.