Jsoftware
Jsoftware Inc. is the vendor for the J programming language and associated database management system Jd.[1] Incorporated in February 1990 by Eric Iverson as Iverson Software Inc. and soon joined by Ken Iverson and Roger Hui, the company is now owned equally by Eric Iverson and Chris Burke.[2]
History
Iverson Software Inc. was founded in February 1990 by Eric Iverson, with the intention of offering an improved version of SHARP APL/PC. By this time Eric's father Ken had begun work with Roger Hui on the language J (in fact, the first public demo of J was also held in February 1990); the pair joined Iverson Software in May of that year (Eugene McDonnell was also an early employee of ISI). Eric adapted his SHARP session manager to work with Hui's J implementation, and J was first released at APL90 in August 1990. ISI sold J concurrently with a series of SHARP-based APL products APLIWIN, APLIPC, and APLI386, but discontinued these APL offerings after a few years.[3] In 1994, the company hired Chris Burke to work on J's environment and libraries. In April 2000, it changed its name to Jsoftware; while the name Iverson Software Inc. is no longer used, it remains in the prefix "isi" used for some J tools.[4]
Ken Iverson died in 2004, leaving Eric, Hui, and Burke as owners of Jsoftware. In 2011, Hui joined Dyalog Ltd., reducing his involvement in J development. J was made open source in March 2011.[5]
In 2012 Marshall Lochbaum, then a summer intern at ThomasNet, began work on a modification of Chris Burke's JDB database management system to add more powerful features such as joins. Eric Iverson soon joined the project and Jsoftware negotiated with ThomasNet to obtain copyright ownership. JD, or JDB+, was announced on July 23, 2012 at the Jsoftware conference.[6] Now called Jd, it is maintained and sold by Jsoftware.[7]
Henry Rich, a long-time APL and J user, began work with Jsoftware on the J implementation in 2016. Version J805, released December 19, 2016, is the first to feature his work.[8]
Conferences
- Main article: Jsoftware conferences
Jsoftware has held at least five programming conferences to date:
- 1996 J User Conference, Toronto, June 24–25th 1996[9]
- J2000, Toronto, October 4–6th 2000[10]
- J2001, New York City, October 18–19th 2001[11]
- Jsoftware Conference 2012, Toronto, July 23–24th 2012
- Jsoftware Conference 2014, Toronto, July 24–25th 2014
References
- ↑ Jsoftware. "About Us".
- ↑ Iverson, Eric. "home page update and Jd release". 2015-05-12.
- ↑ ISI. Miscellaneous documents held in York University IPSA collection. 1991-1992.
- ↑ Hui, Roger. "Remembering Ken Iverson". November 2004.
- ↑ Iverson, Eric. "J Source GPL". 2011-03-02.
- ↑ Iverson, Eric. "JD (JDB+) announcement". Jsoftware Conference 2012. 2012-07-23.
- ↑ Jsoftware. "Jd/Index".
- ↑ Iverson, Eric. "j805-beta-11 release candidates". 2016-08-23.
- ↑ Iverson Software Inc. J User Conference Proceedings. 1996-06-24.
- ↑ Faust, Anne. J2000 User Conference. J forums.
- ↑ Faust, Anne. J 2001 User Conference. J forums.
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