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From: mjsilva@my-deja.com
Subject: Re: Customer balks at Ada -- any hope?
Date: 2000/07/18
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In article <39748F35.72CBC45A@averstar.com>,
  Tucker Taft <stt@averstar.com> wrote:
> mjsilva@my-deja.com wrote:
> >
> > 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?
>
> With the appearance of Java and C#, I would guess finding good
> programmers with C++ experience may be harder in the future

That's a good point -- C++ seems to be the language that everybody
wants to fix...
>
> Another important point is that good programmers can learn new
languages
> quickly, and Ada compilers provide excellent "training wheels" because
> of their abundant compile-time error checking.

I definitely want to select some clear Ada source code to back this
point.  I also suspect that when one selects only embedded-savvy
programmers the balance isn't nearly so lopsided for C++.  It's pretty
obvious to me that it's easier to teach an embedded-savvy programmer
Ada (especially "maintainence" Ada) than to teach a "generic" C++
programmer embedded smarts.

Mike


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