I always found it funny when Rust came about, I can't help but feel like, and maybe I'm misremembering when I deep dove Ada the first time, Ada was our first "Rust" like language, maybe Delphi / Pascal is the only other really close one that became mainstream enough before Rust did?
Rust emerged from the language enthusiast community not a formal industry committee and in some ways that was its superpower.
I and many others have looked at Ada with some appreciation for decades. But the actual "community" around the language was foreign to me; government, defense contractors, etc places that frankly wouldn't even hire me.
It's got appealing constructs, and I grew up with the Wirth languages so I wans't put off by its syntax and style... and I even sometimes considered rewriting my OSS C++ pieces in it because I was so desperate for something better. But it was just a self-limiting box.
I agree, as someone who is fascinated by it. I worked for a defense contracting company, and no even they used it. It's such a strange gem of a language, so much potential lost.
