On Wednesday, 9 July 2014 at 13:18:00 UTC, jim schmit wrote:
i recently sent this email to andrei. he encouraged me to post
it in this forum. here it is:
hi andrei
a colleague recently pointed me to the wired article about you
& your D computer language. thought you might be interested an
earlier attempt to produce a new & better computer language
that we called d (lower case). fear not, i am an engineer, not
a lawyer, & do not sue people.
my name is jim schmit. i am a retired engineer / professor /
entrepreneur / international business man / corporate
executive. I wrote my 1st program over 50 years ago. i worked
for IBM as a systems engineer on the first OS on big iron.
disillusioned with the consequences of complexity in computer
design (i am a pathological minimalist), i dropped out to
become a computer science professor & "do my own thing". i was
extremely active at the birth of the microcomputer. in the mid
70's i created a programming system for small cheap control
computers based on a stack architecture pseudo machine. it was
tiny intended to fit entirely in a 2K byte eprom. the run time
system consisted of a set of “base” functions that fit in less
than 1/2 K bytes of memory. there was no interpreter, the code
was threaded. the application fit in the other 1 1/2K. the
functions used byte codes & used less than 1/3 the space of
well written machine language and ran at 1/2 the speed of
machine code. net results…3x the functionality in the same rom
while far easier to write & debug code. i called it omega
before i could commercialize my system, i was distracted.
i was commissioned to design & build what became known as
CompuTrac, the first microcomputer based technical analytic
system for trading the commodities markets. it became an
instant hit & we soon found ourselves at the forefront of real
time trading systems. we developed initially for the apple II
& later the PC.
by the late 70’s we were searching for a new hardware platform
& disappointed in the options available decided to “roll our
own”. we revisited omega as the basis for a real time graphic
workstation. a former customer, turned competitor, named his
product omega, so we renamed the language d (after c). with 2
former student assistants, paul johnstone & ana maria roa, we
started delta digital designs “strong designs & innovative
coffee”.
we introduced our delta computer with d software in late ’83.
the software extended into the new windowed environment but
remained small & quick. Our first product was called
TradePlan. it was a real time vector spreadsheet with
constantly changing graphic output. it could monitor 3 real
time ticker feeds of exchange trading data, maintain a local
data base of time series prices, feed 4 spreadsheets that were
fully user programable to calculate technical indicators &
create a trading system with alarms of opportunity & display
all on constantly updating charts. the d machine run time
system containing multitasking scheduler, real time i/o
handlers, a complete graphic windowing capability ran in under
8K of code. The trade plan app code was under 24K. running on
a 6809 processor, it was highly user responsive & could keep up
with the workload.
it became famous in it’s small world of finance. In 1985 both
CompuTrac & Delta Digital Designs was bought by Dow Jones /
Telerate.
at dow, our products were renamed, extended & added to. we did
another product called Matrix that was a user programmable
financial market monitor / consolidator that proved very
popular.
In the late 80’s our products generated just under $1B revenue
for DJ.
Matrix used the 3rd iteration of the d language, rebuilt to be
fully object oriented.
I retired in 1992 but my team continued the work for dow & a
series of other owners until 2003.
if any of this is of any interest to you, please let me know.
regards
Cool story, bro.
