Lucid Energize Demo VHS 1993
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it constantly as evidence that modern IDE and LSP-style features existed in the early 90s.
What it is
A 1993 VHS demo of Lucid Energize, a database-backed, incremental C/C++ programming environment built on XEmacs. It shows features like incremental compilation, live debugging and hyperlinked output.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2016 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Cites pjmlp · 2016-01 · on “Raspberry Pi Bare Metal Programming with Rust”
I also only toyed with Ada. My real work experience with Algol like languages are Turbo Pascal, Delphi and Oberon. Although thanks to my interest into compiler development during my CS degree, I also do have some knowledge of almost all major Wirth influenced languages. Personally, I do prefer some verbosity to lines full of symbols. Ada 2012 is quite good. It is also remarkable that in the 80's Ada 83 as seen as almost impossible to implement and nowadays C++ is way complexer to implement than Ada 2012. Another anecdote, Rational started out in mid-80's as a startup doing Ada workstations[1] (think Ada machines), with IDE capabilities that probably only Lucid C++ had in the 90's [2]. [1] [L
Cites pjmlp · 2016-05 · on “Cling: An Interactive C++ interpreter”
Interactive programming is very developer friendly workflow, something that was already possible at Xerox PARC in their Smalltalk, Interlisp-D and Mesa/CEDAR environments. Actually there was an early attempt to provide C++ repls back in the early 90's with Lucid Energize C++, after they pivoted from Lisp Machines and applied their knowledge to C++. [this video] Also the majority of CERN code is written in a mix of Fortran and C++, and not all teams like to use Python. So they rather use something that provides interactivity to research their algorithms and speed at the same time.
Cites pjmlp · 2016-05 · on “Cling: An Interactive C++ interpreter”
Like Lucid Energize C++ in 1993 ? [this video] Or C++ Builder or C Set++ for OS/2 (might have the name wrong). If it wasn't for tool vendors having switched their focus from C++ to Java and .NET, until LLVM and clang got created showing everyone what was wrong with their approaches, C++ IDEs might have been much more advanced already, in spite of technical issues with language.
Cites pjmlp · 2016-10 · on “Symbolics Lisp Machine Museum”
The point being that we have seen the future like Bret puts it, and are to certain extent disappointed that the industry keeps doing left turns. Many C++ users are finally enjoying environments like Clion and incremental compilers, well this was a C++ environment in 1993: [this video] Built on top of Lucid Common Lisp infrastructure, as Lucid pivoted their business to C++. IBM had a similar one, that imported C++ into a database, offering a Smalltalk like development experience for C++, called VisualAge C++ Professional 4.0 [LINK] So yeah, we are grey hair dogs disappointed how things evolve.
Cites pjmlp · 2017-11 · on “Cquery: highly-scalable, low-latency language server for C++”
It existed, but sadly both were too early for the market. The first one was from Lucid, after pivoting away from Lisp Machines. [LINK] Here is a demo on YouTube. [this video] IBM also tried to create a Smalltalk style repository in Visual Age for C++ v4.0, which has quite resource hungry for mid-90's PCs. So we had to wait until the idea of compiler as library to catch on, to get those ideas back.
Cites pjmlp · 2018-04 · on “Apple's investment into Clangd and refactoring tooling”
Here is how Lucid implemented their C++ knowledge repository for Energize C++. "Foundation for a C++ Programming Environment", chapter 7, Protocols [LINK] And how it looked like with their Emacs customization in 1993 on UNIX. [this video]
Cites pjmlp · 2020-02 · on “Rust Moving Towards an IDE-Friendly Compiler with Rust Analyzer”
It would look like Lucid Energize for C++, here a 1993 sales demo: [this video] Or the version 4 of IBM's Visual Age for C++ Visual Age for C++ was quite impressive, the whole program was serialized into a database, an approach similar to Energize, and you could edit C++ code just like in a Smalltalk environment. Sadly not much of it has survived, so save pages like this while they exist [LINK] The problem with those two products was that they were ahead of their time, so with their hardware requirements, ended up being a commercial failure. Then for something more down to earth, there is C++ Builder, the only actual C++ RAD tooling, but their market is only deep pocket corporations. Think VB exp
Cites sedachv · 2020-03 · on “Miranda released as free software”
Compare Symbolics Genera to a Free Software Common Lisp development environment today (SBCL and SLIME on GNU Emacs). The latter does a lot less and is more bloated. Commercial Common Lisp compilers like Allegro and LispWorks have features and optimizations that Free Software compilers lack (Allegro has really good debugging tools and garbage collection, LispWorks has excellent support for concurrent programming). Intel Fortran compiler and their C++ compiler produce the fastest code. Lucid Energize and IBM VisualAge C++ did incremental compilation and had IDE features not available with Free Software C++ compilers and editors/debuggers. [this video] [LINK]