What languages did you implement before starting Kx Systems in 1993?
All through the 1980s I implemented a lot of languages: LISP, Scheme and object-oriented languages. But by 1988 I was back working with APL. Morgan Stanley was using APL on a mainframe and we wanted to be able to run the calculations on Unix workstations, which were becoming quite powerful. What was the environment like at Morgan Stanley in those days? The firm had 10 years’ worth of trades and quotes they analyzed to build proprietary real-time trading systems. There was no good workstation version of APL back then, nothing fast enough for what we needed. I felt I could create a faster language using the same basic vocabulary as APL. Morgan was a remarkable place to work, because the people were very smart and excited about what we were doing. They wanted the highest possible quality, and they were willing to provide what was needed. So I wrote the A+ language as a replacement for APL. What happened with A+? Within a month or two we were using it to analyze our historical data. A few
