Microsoft’s Simonyi Starts SW Company

When I was still learning about word processors and the beginnings of office automation, I remember meeting Charles Simonyi, a computer scientist at Xerox’s PARC who in those far-distant days was largely responsible for the text editor of the STAR’s early prototype, the Bravo editor, the first graphical user interface word processor with an intent-based point of view and the ability to display full pages of print-like quality text and line drawings.

Simonyi left Xerox and went on to be an important member of the Microsoft technical staff, taking the lessons learned from Bravo to create Microsoft Word. He served as Microsoft’s senior architect through 1999.  Since then, he’s been working on the project that has led to his decision to leave Microsoft and form the new company.

He’s now left, with a few Microsoft colleagues and plans with some of his Hungarian colleagues (Simonyi is Hungarian), to try to build a better way of supporting developers in the creation of software.

Intentional Software Corporation will try to build a software development environment (languages and tools, if we understand the little that has been disclosed so far), using modern graphically-based tools, that will permit developers to build the design intentions of the software directly into the code itself, rather than needing to write comments, which are rarely well crafted and are often omitted or lost.

Simonyi arranged to leave Microsoft with the right to use the intellectual property he had developed and patented while working there.  Microsoft has the right of first refusal, should Intentional Software decide to sell the company.

Intentionals' ingenuous web site with an extensive FAQ may be viewed at www.Intentionalsoftware.com.

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