Wasn’t he the Logix Projects Manager inventor?
(LPM)
Pretty sure Keith and Ann were the owners, and there was a team of devs working on LPM. Not sure I’d call him the Inventor. But maybe he was.
I thought that was him.
He offered me a job once - back when Ben Brady was working for him. Guessing it was 2000.
I believe he was Keith David Howington.
Quite a brilliant guy, actually.
May he rest in peace.
About 12 years ago I archived this Logix history from http://www.logixdev.com/
the web site no longer exists - I hope this may be of interest.
A brief history of the company
Logix was originally called Aries Software Services when it was formed in Florida as a sole proprietorship, then Aries Computer Systems. The company was founded by D. Keith Howington, who is still the company’s CEO. Microcomputers were still the domain of hobbyists, but a few intrepid businesses were experimenting with ways in which these devices might help in an office environment. We were at the cutting edge of this effort.
It’s hard to imagine today how these early microcomputers were perceived, and how they were equipped. Our first official custom software package was for a Toyota dealership in Ft. Lauderdale, and the equipment did not even include a floppy, let alone a hard drive! Every morning, they loaded their inventory from cassette tape, and saved it in the evening. When hard drives for microcomputers came out, a 5-megabyte hard drive (1/1000th of what is now common) took two hefty guys to carry.
Along the way, Aries developed an early but very functional word processor, a special date compression mechanism that avoided the Year 2000 problem, and a concept of system design that serves us well to this day. In fact, we still use the original date compression internally; if it had become widespread, perhaps there would have been no Year 2000 problem.
In Florida in those days, microcomputers were diverse. We started years before IBM introduced the PC (which was August 1, 1981) and even a few years after that date it was not at all clear which of the myriad of incompatible systems would survive. Few of us now remember the Exidy Sorcerer, the Ohio Scientific machines, Vector Graphics, S-100 based systems. Since Aries sold computers as well as built the software to run on them, our lives were forever complicated by the variety.
In the beginning of 1984, Keith Howington moved the business to California for a large custom project. All of a sudden, there were customers that understood the idea of computers in a business, you could walk into any of dozens of computer stores to buy the hardware, and Aries could focus on the software side.
At least in theory. We became specialists in Molecular multi-user systems (serious business computers in those days), and because we could not find vendors that would take appropriate care of our clients, we continued to sell hardware. Keith met Gary Kuipers at this point, and wound up subcontracting some of the software development side to Gary so that Keith and his team could handle the hardware. The problem with this approach was that Keith enjoyed most the design and development of business systems, but wound up turning screwdrivers instead.
So, it was time to re-invent the business. Gary became a partner, and the business was incorporated in January, 1985 as Logix Development Corporation. The next two years found us working on large projects, in the entertainment and international finance world.
Business went well, but two years later Keith bought Gary out so that Gary could pursue business interests in South America. Logix continued to focus on software development, but now the tools and methodologies that Keith had been creating for production programming began to be an income stream in their own right. We were using the ODBS language at the time, and Logix utilities became part of the language, as well as being available in several add-on kits.
Later, Logix utilities for the Clarion language (actually, an entire development platform based on the language) became the most popular Clarion add-on the month it was introduced. As a result, Keith and Anne and the rest of the programming team, including Eric Kuyper, became popular speakers, and programmer/user groups formed for Logix’s products as far away as Australia. We made many friends on our trips, and were treated like royalty.
All of this took time away from our core business, which was developing top-notch, large scale business and scientific applications. We reluctantly bowed out of the programming utilities business, and then were clobbered by the Northridge Earthquake a couple of months later, in January 1994.
We were about 1 mile from the epicenter, had no power for days, and no water until we moved out of the building. A lease was signed for temporary space in Westlake Village about ten days after the quake, but it was a while before the move could take place - movers were very busy at that point.
This was a discouraging moment for us. We had been very successful from a technical standpoint, but had not amassed resources capable of getting us through this difficult situation. So, after a couple of weeks of soul-searching, Keith re-invented the business again. This time, instead of writing systems and giving them to clients, we would run the systems for our clients, on a 24 hour basis.
Shortly thereafter, we began a call center, and we did well in this area also. Over the next 50 months, Logix’s sales volume increased by a factor of 50, and we went from about a dozen employees to about a hundred. Along the way, we refined technologies to enable us to service customers in these new areas, and the management team and methods that would allow us to control it to get the results we wanted.
Ultimately, it was the people of Logix that made the process work, and that keeps it working well today. If we lost everything else, but kept our people, we could build it all again.
==========
LPM Development Platform
This was the work that gained Logix widespread recognition as a premier tool-builder for serious applications. Since the late 70’s, we had created not only software, but a methodology of software development that lent itself to the high-speed development of high-speed, high-quality software. In the 80’s, Logix tools were included in the 4GL language called ODBS (it may as well stand for Obscure DataBase System). Logix was considered by many to be the best programming shop in this language. When we moved to Clarion late in the 80’s, we re-created our tools (and updated our philosophies) to form LPM. The name originally meant “Logix Project Manager”, although the system went far beyond that. LPM was released in February 1991, and became the number one selling aftermarket product in the language (there were many!) within thirty days.
Clarion included a tool to allow specification of screens and files, and you could then generate source code which got you off to a good start for many business applications. LPM added tremendous horsepower to this prototyping environment, so that you could finish any business application and never leave the specification environment. You kept only the specifications, and killed the source code after generating your application. To update it, you simply updated the specs.
The 1200 pages of documentation for LPM also includes essays on the philosophy, discipline, standardization, and methodologies of serious, mission-critical application design. The thousands of “happygrams” we collected from programmers and business managers were often testimonials to how this part of LPM was crucial to the success of their projects.
=================
also in January 2002, Warren Marshall, who had been the Australian distributor for LPM wrote:
LPM by Logix Development Corporation, developed by
D. Keith Howington. Logix is now a significant player in
video-on-demand-via-satellite technology;
The LPM Model was partially developed by Tom Moseley, who then built the CW
templates up to 2.0 - now (afaik) at Hank Asher’s Indar Corporation;
LPM Linker was a massaged and superbly integrated WarpLink, a 16-bit linker
which made otherwise impossibly large Clarion 2.1 executables runnable.
WarpLink was by Mike Devore, contactable at http://www.devoresoftware.com/
Mike also wrote Causeway, a 32-bit linker which also works with Clarion 2.1.
There was some sort of falling out between Mike Devore and Keith Howington
toward the end of LPM’s life, and purchases of LPM had to be ligitimized by
a parallel purchase of a WarpLink licence.
With the LA earthquake, whose epicenter was half a mile down the road from
Logix, their entire stock of LPM 2.5 documentation was destroyed, along with
the masters. I was the Australian distributor at the time and, with Logix’
blessing, began selling to the few people worldwide who still needed it. I
still have a couple of pristine documentation sets. Just this year, I
discovered a whole boxful (10 sets I think) and handed them to Keith
Howington (used to be known as Dave until there were too many Daves in his
business circle), who was in Australia for a business meeting. Logix still
uses and maintains LPM applications extensively in-house.
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Yes, I found it at the Wayback Machine as well.
Couldn’t remember Camarillo but recalled it was near Thousand Oaks.
Also recall that the biggest money maker then was adult films.
I loved LPM.
It was way ahead of its time back in those DOS days.
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Hi Jeff - sadly another addition - Phillip Carrol of Ultra Tree fame (Enabling Simplicity) has passed.
Mike Gorman posted the attached on Skype
ClarionAnnuncement.pdf (69.5 KB)
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Geoff - Thanks for posting this. I always enjoyed my communications with Phil. I hope Mike can keep UltraTree current.
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