Where's Aetech?

Where's Aetech?

[Charles H. Sampson]

     Does anybody know what's happened to Aetech?  It is (was?) based in
a San Diego suburb, but when we try to telephone them we get "The number
you have called is disconnected and there is no new number" from the tele-
phone company.

				Charlie

Re: Where's Aetech?

[David Weller]

In article <1995Mar23.165030.643@nosc.mil>,
Charles H. Sampson <sampson@cod.nosc.mil> wrote:
>     Does anybody know what's happened to Aetech?  It is (was?) based in
>a San Diego suburb, but when we try to telephone them we get "The number
>you have called is disconnected and there is no new number" from the tele-
>phone company.
>
>				Charlie

Dare we speculate that one each retired Air Force officer failed to
move with the market, and summarily self-destructed his company by
pursuing legal channels to terminate the GNAT program?  We can only
hope! :-)

-- 
      Frustrated with C, C++, Pascal, Fortran?  Ada95 _might_ be for you!
	  For all sorts of interesting Ada95 tidbits, run the command:
"finger dweller@starbase.neosoft.com | more" (or e-mail with "finger" as subj.)
		if u cn rd ths, u r gd enuf to chg to Ada   :-)

Re: Where's Aetech?

[Gregory Aharonian]

>From: dweller@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (David Weller)
>Dare we speculate that one each retired Air Force officer failed to
>move with the market, and summarily self-destructed his company by
>pursuing legal channels to terminate the GNAT program?  We can only
>hope! :-)

    Given that Jim Thomes, the ex-Air Force officer in question, and Aetech,
was one of the few BUSINESSES spending money to actually advertise Ada in
print, and other things to promote Ada outside the Mandated world, I think
your attitude toward him stinks, and is why Ada as a business is in so much
trouble.  Aetech, and many other Ada startups now forgotten (look through
the vendor lists from the late 1980's Tri-Adas), all were treated atrociously
by the Mandated world, mainly by contradictory Defense procurement regulations
that suffocated Ada startups, and by socialists in the DoD giving the big Ada
bucks to liars like IBM who ditched the language as soon as the pork tried up.
As an investment, the STARS program has been a disaster, money better used to
seed an Ada industry instead of filling the pension plans of big, fat DoD
contractors.

    Could Aetech have done things better?  Sure, we all could.  But I
am sick and tired of everyone in the Mandated world, especially certain
DISA types, complaining about the lack of a "turbo"-Ada, when the one
BUSINESS trying to do so was sandbagged by socialist DoD bureaucrats who
have no idea about the market distortions caused by the Ada Mandate and
things like GNAT, bureaucrats who could have done much more to change the
DoD so startups like Aetech could make a profit with competitive products,
profits part of which could have funded efforts to push Ada outside the
Mandated world.

    There are countless studies of advertising (that no one inthe DoD has
ever read) showing the consumers want to see advertisements from a company
whose products they might buy.  In the 1990's, Jim Thomes and Aetech was the
only consistent advertiser of Ada (admittedly the small ads at the backs of
magazines was not enough but what was affordable).  For that alone, and
nothing more, Jim deserves better treatment than the above scorn.

     And that anyone is happy that one of the side-effects of GNAT was to
drive one of the few Ada businesses into the ground is very sad, the type
of attitude that drives software entrepreneurs into the arms of other
languages.

Greg Aharonian

Re: Where's Aetech?

[Bill Hart @ignite]

In <1995Mar23.165030.643@nosc.mil> sampson@cod.nosc.mil (Charles H. Sampson) writes:

>     Does anybody know what's happened to Aetech?  It is (was?) based in
>a San Diego suburb, but when we try to telephone them we get "The number
>you have called is disconnected and there is no new number" from the tele-
>phone company.

>				Charlie

Hi Charlie,

Aetech reorganized and is now AET in Solana Beach (I think).  You
can reach them at (619) 793-0245.  Tell Jim I said Hi.

Bill Hart
hart@thomsoft.com

Re: Where's Aetech?

[David Weller]

In article <D643tv.HCu@thomsoft.com>,
Bill Hart @ignite <bhart@alsys.com> wrote:
>Aetech reorganized and is now AET in Solana Beach (I think).  You
>can reach them at (619) 793-0245.  Tell Jim I said Hi.
>

This is interesting news.  Despite my earlier sniping, I believe
there's ALWAYS room for another company.  Perhaps AET will enter the
Ada market a little wiser.  


-- 
      Frustrated with C, C++, Pascal, Fortran?  Ada95 _might_ be for you!
	  For all sorts of interesting Ada95 tidbits, run the command:
"finger dweller@starbase.neosoft.com | more" (or e-mail with "finger" as subj.)
		if u cn rd ths, u r gd enuf to chg to Ada   :-)

Re: Where's Aetech?

[Robert Dewar]

Greg, I am not so sure that it is fair to blame GNAT for "driving AETech
into the ground". Actually I have been a little surprised that AETech did
not take advantage of GNAT, their main product was, as I understand things,
a nice Windows environment for Ada compilers, and I see no reason why that
should not have been married with GNAT, it sounds like an effective
combination to me, but oh well ...

Re: Where's Aetech?

[Ulrich Klug]

Dear Greg !


>
>      And that anyone is happy that one of the side-effects of GNAT was  
to
> drive one of the few Ada businesses into the ground is very sad, the type
> of attitude that drives software entrepreneurs into the arms of other
> languages.
>
> Greg Aharonian



Why in detail was the GNAT-project able to drive Aetech into the ground ?

As far as I know the GNAT-compiler is not validated and programming is not  
very comfortable in comparison with the Integrated Development  
Environments of professional vendors.

Sincerely
Ulrich

## CrossPoint v3.02 R ##

Re: Where's Aetech?

[Thomas Smith (703)913-4455]

>From: dweller@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (David Weller)
>Dare we speculate that one each retired Air Force officer failed to
>move with the market, and summarily self-destructed his company by
>pursuing legal channels to terminate the GNAT program?  We can only
>hope! :-)


Well let me see now, I do believe that it was just earlier this week
that I contacted Aetech(now known as Applied something technologies)
And the person that I talked to seemed to still be very much in
business.

But, what do I know?

Re: Where's Aetech?

[Mark S. Hathaway]

> In article <SRCTRAN.95Mar26113150@world.std.com>,
> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:

>> From: dweller@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (David Weller)

>> Dare we speculate that one each retired Air Force officer failed to
>> move with the market, and summarily self-destructed his company by
>> pursuing legal channels to terminate the GNAT program?  We can only
>> hope! :-)

>     Given that Jim Thomes, the ex-Air Force officer in question, and Aetech,
> was one of the few BUSINESSES spending money to actually advertise Ada in
> print, and other things to promote Ada outside the Mandated world, I think
> your attitude toward him stinks, and is why Ada as a business is in so much
> trouble.  Aetech, and many other Ada startups now forgotten (look through
> the vendor lists from the late 1980's Tri-Adas), all were treated atrociously
> by the Mandated world, mainly by contradictory Defense procurement regulations
> that suffocated Ada startups, and by socialists in the DoD giving the big Ada
> bucks to liars like IBM who ditched the language as soon as the pork tried up.
> As an investment, the STARS program has been a disaster, money better used to
> seed an Ada industry instead of filling the pension plans of big, fat DoD
> contractors.

> ...

>      And that anyone is happy that one of the side-effects of GNAT was to
> drive one of the few Ada businesses into the ground is very sad, the type
> of attitude that drives software entrepreneurs into the arms of other
> languages.
> 
> Greg Aharonian

I remember hearing, some time ago, of a quote from Ringo Starr
(of Beatles fame).  You might find it appropriate in regard to
"mandated" Ada.  I'll paraphrase to avoid misquoting.

'Everything the government touches turns to shit.'

It's kind of a Midas touch -- in reverse.  :-)


Mark S. Hathaway       <hathawa2@marshall.edu>

Re: Where's Aetech?

[Mitch Gart]

Gregory Aharonian (srctran@world.std.com) wrote:

[snip]
:     Given that Jim Thomes, the ex-Air Force officer in question, and Aetech,
: was one of the few BUSINESSES spending money to actually advertise Ada in
: print, and other things to promote Ada outside the Mandated world, I think
[snip]

Greg, you're always the first one to say bad things about compiler
vendors as long as they're in business.  Then when you hear that one
is gone, you lament their passing.  Could your attitude be summarized
as "the only good Ada company is a dead one"?

	Mitch Gart

Re: Where's Aetech?

[Tucker Taft]

GNAT has almost single-handledly rekindled grass-roots interest
in Ada over the past 18 months.  Without GNAT, there would have
been no widely available compiler that implemented Ada 95 features
for the past 18 months.  AETech's compiler was Intel/DOS or 
Intel/POSIX only, and was not FTP-able by the new generation 
of Internet junkies.  

Note that AETech fed at the same "trough" we all did the past 5 years, 
namely the Ada 9X Project Office.  The money provided by the Ada 9X
project office enabled the Ada 9X mapping/revision process to successfully
produce the first ISO standardized object-oriented programming language
(pretty much on time ;-), while also funding three user/implementor 
teams (AETech/RR, Unisys/Telesoft, and TRW/Tartan), funding GNAT, 
promoting Ada's usage in universities, developing commercially-oriented 
marketing materials, etc.

Without the efforts funded by the DoD's Ada 9X project office over the past
five years, it is clear that Ada would not be seeing the resurgence
in interest it is now.

No Ada vendor of any sort is going to make money if there are no
Ada programmers.  Funding GNAT was an extremely cost-effective way 
to boost the number of Ada programmers.

Note that there are "free" GNU compilers for other languages as well.
These compilers have often been helpful in "legitimizing" these 
languages, by giving developers the confidence that there will
be a language-X compiler available when they move to their next
hardware platform, whatever it is.  Certainly the availability of g++ 
helped with the success of C++ in the "early" days, by allowing
companies to try C++ without overcommitting.  GNAT can and is
serving that very same role for Ada 95.

-Tucker Taft  stt@inmet.com
Intermetrics, Inc.