Being something of a “4D fossil” myself as one of our more celebrated peers once put it, I couldn’t help raising an eyebrow at the quietly announced retirement (see 4D Blog) of an equally entrenched but possibly far more productive contemporary and felt I couldn’t let this news pass without at least a minor ceremonial hat tip ;)
As a bit of historical background, those who joined the community during the last 15 years are perhaps blissfully unaware of this piece of epic elastoplast which has held 4D’s cross-platform existence in place for the best part of a quarter of a century. As such, it only predates Google, Netscape Navigator, the Pentium Processor, DVDs and Windows 95 for starters. But lets go back to 1994 and the pivotal ‘pre-rollout’ of the most advanced database in the universe at twin 4D Summits in the US and Europe (Lille, France was the one I attended). Running on Mac, Windows AND UNIX, it incorporated a virtual machine layer which meant the design team only had to code for 1 platform. It also ticked just about every wishlist item anyone has had in the 25 years since and - best of all - it wasn’t even vapourware. I actually saw LR in front of a Sun Spark workstation run a 10-second sequential search on 10,000 records which probably represented the modern-day equivalent of mining a whole bitcoin to yourself in a single day. There was only 1 problem. Although 4D Universal’s resplendent virtualisation gymnastics would insulate it from hardware diversity, it wouldn’t insulate it from Mick Jagger who was about to launch the world’s most widely adopted O/S the following year. Nor would it mitigate the deafening clamor from impatient 4D users demanding Windows compliance yesterday - no last month - with full networking support for IPX/TCP and all known PC hardware and right now with no delay for postage or other unnecessary hold-ups. Handily (or tragically depending on your point of view), something “turned up”. I vaguely remember a presentation the next year where it was announced…”we’ve actually stumbled upon a very handy tool that just lets us….”. And so the world’s greatest database was put on ice and a new 25-year quest engaged known as “Escape from Altura Toolbox” that made an Indiana Jones tale look like a round of golf. Inexorably entwined with Apple’s own “Escape from O/S 9” trauma, subsequent abortive attempts at least delivered on symbolism with working titles such as “Goldfinger” and no-doubt several others that never even made it off The Laurent’s & Asmae’s dinner napkins. That they’ve finally done it is a testament to perseverance of the 4th kind (and possibly some kind of clever programming too ;) ). Congratulations to all concerned ! ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) FAQ: http://lists.4d.com/faqnug.html Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: http://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:4d_tech-unsubscr...@lists.4d.com **********************************************************************
