Intentional Software

Summary

Intentional Software was a software company that designed tools and platforms that followed the principles of intentional programming[1] in which programmers focus on capturing the intent of users and designers, and spend as little time as possible interacting with machines and compilers.[2] Its tools included language workbenches, tools that separated software function from implementation, and allowed 'language-focused' development.[3][4] This allowed automatic rewriting of code as expert knowledge of implementation options changed.[5] The company later began developing a platform for improving productivity of software groups.

Intentional Software
IndustrySoftware engineering
FoundedSeptember 2002
FounderCharles Simonyi
Gregor Kiczales Edit this on Wikidata
DefunctApril 2017
FateAcquired by Microsoft
Headquarters
Key people
Charles Simonyi (co-founder), Eric C. Anderson (CEO)
Number of employees
50-100
ParentMicrosoft Edit this on Wikidata
Websitehttp://www.intentional.com

The company was co-founded by Charles Simonyi and Gregor Kiczales in 2002, and later headed by CEO Eric Anderson. However, Kiczales left the company in 2003.[6] In 2017 it had almost 100 staff.[7] On April 18, 2017, it was acquired by Microsoft,[8][9] with many of its employees joining the Microsoft Office team.

Products and services edit

Intentional Software developed the Domain Workbench, a language workbench for building and working with domain-specific languages,[10] and designed custom languages for clients for their particular uses.[11] They also built the Intentional Platform,[12] a platform for group productivity software.

References edit

  1. ^ Rosenberg, Scott. "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Meta". Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  2. ^ Pontin, Jason (2007). "Awaiting the Day When Everyone Writes Software". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-09-12.
  3. ^ Fowler, Martin. "Language Workbenches: The Killer-App for Domain Specific Languages?" (PDF).
  4. ^ Rosenan, Boaz (2010). "Designing language-oriented programming languages". Proceedings of the ACM international conference companion on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications companion. OOPSLA '10. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 207–208. doi:10.1145/1869542.1869576. ISBN 9781450302401. S2CID 13841558.
  5. ^ Simonyi, Charles; Christerson, Magnus; Clifford, Shane (2006). "Intentional software". Proceedings of the 21st annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applications. OOPSLA '06. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 451–464. doi:10.1145/1167473.1167511. ISBN 1595933484. S2CID 10334945.
  6. ^ "Co-Founder Of Intentional Software Has Left The Company". InformationWeek. Retrieved 2020-07-28.
  7. ^ "Charles Simonyi rejoins Microsoft as it buys his startup". The Seattle Times. 2017-04-18. Retrieved 2017-09-12.
  8. ^ Miller, Ron. "Microsoft acquires Intentional Software and brings old friend back into fold - TechCrunch". Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  9. ^ "Charles Simonyi, Founder, Chairman, and CTO -". www.intentional.com. Archived from the original on 2018-08-25. Retrieved 2017-09-12.
  10. ^ "Charles Simonyi reveals production use of Intentional Software @ JAOO". InfoQ. Retrieved 2017-09-12.
  11. ^ "ACORD and Intentional Software Announce Strategic Partnership — ACORD.org Press Releases". Press Releases. Retrieved 2017-09-12.
  12. ^ "Intentional Platform -". www.intentsoft.com. Retrieved 2017-09-12.

External links edit

  • Intentional Software website
  • Martin Fowler's essay on the company