before D there was d

[jim schmit via Digitalmars-d]

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