Re: Where's Aetech?

[srctran@world.std.com (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