On 7/9/14, 6:17 AM, 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
Whew, Walter dodged a bullet there by capitalizing his "D" language! :)
Seriously though, this is a fascinating glimpse at some interesting
technology and history. Many thanks for taking the time to post this here.
