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Yeah, that's more like it. RPG worked a lot to bring sophisticated Lisp to UNIX systems. He worked on bringing a standard OOP system to Lisp (incl. Lisp Machines, where Lucid (and he personally) collaborated with Xerox PARC and Symbolics to develop CLOS as a part of the ANSI Common Lisp standard).

Then he tried to develop and market similar technology in the form of a databased-backed incremental C++ development system for UNIX (called Energize). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQQTScuApWk He hoped that the market for C++ environments was larger than the shrinking Lisp market and that C++ developers would want an interactive system with integrated code management in an object store. That did not went well.




Reports were that Energize customers were relieved when Lucid folded, because they would then not get a whole new set of compiler bugs to discover every quarter. They had, instead, the bugs they already knew about and had learned to work around.

Lisp Machines anyway raised the standard of quality in CRT monitors. Manufacturing their own monitors has to have contributed substantially to their downfall, but we all benefited in the end. Well, all but them.




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