OddThinking

It’s 1991. Way back before Rational Software became part of IBM. Back before RUP. Back before they acquired ClearCase. Back before the UML Gang of Three were a gang. Back before Gra-Gra Booch stopped writing about Ada. Back before Rose 1.0 had been released.

Rational used to pimp a custom-built mini-computer. Yep, that’s right. Serious hardware. Sounds weird now, coming from a company that sells software tools and business methods.

On top of that piece of hardware, they built their very own operating system. Yep, an entire operating system.

On top of that operating system, they built an Ada compiler. (If your reaction is “Ada? That’s the language of death!” that’s fair enough, but please stifle your revulsion for a moment. We have much to learn about high-quality engineering from the US Department of Defence!)

On top of that compiler, they built an IDE purpose-built for writing Ada.

Then they brought out a big whisk and mixed all the layers in together. The IDE was the operating system. The operating system was the Ada compiler. If you opened a command window to write a quick batch job, you wrote the batch job in Ada, using the IDE! Every time you pressed a button, it triggered an Ada program to carry out your command, even to the point of inserting a letter into the IDE (at least notionally – I am sure there were hidden optimizations.)

Using a Rational 1000 was like immersive learning for Ada!