Customer balks at Ada -- any hope?

[mjsilva@my-deja.com]

We're bidding on a custom industrial controller, and I've proposed to
write the firmware in Ada.  The powers-that-be here are satisfied with
that, but the customer is afraid nobody will be around to maintain it.
They're happier with C or C++, alas.  Anybody have any good answers to
their concern?

I realize that implicit in their position is a belief that Ada offers
no great tangible benefits to the project (even though the machinery to
be controlled is big, expensive and remotely-located), which I of
course strongly disagree with.  As I see it, the arguments are (1) Ada
will offer tangible benefits, both in reliability and in development
time, and (2) a decent programmer can pick up similar languages fairly
easily, especially for maintainence.  (Perhaps I should show them some
Ada source...).  Ideas?

Mike


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