Recreating the lost SDK for a 42-year-old operating system: VisiCorp Visi On
3 comments
·December 4, 2025msla
It's interesting how this article deconstructs the buzzwords used in the marketing material to get from "VisiOn is a multitasking object-oriented OS using a VM to be portable" to "VisiOn is a DOS shell that uses C structs in a documented API and was never meaningfully portable"
Seriously, the "VM" thing is stupid:
> The term "virtual machine" used by VisiOn developers means something different from what we mean by the words "virtual machine" today. The closest word we use today would be "API". That's right, Visi On applications use a cross-platform API. Just like almost any other operating system today. I bet it was a really cool idea back in 1983, though.
As if VM isn't overloaded enough already (quick: does it mean "Virtual Memory", "Virtual Machine" as in the JVM, or "Virtual Machine" as in Xen?) using it to mean "API" is just dishonest.
theturtle
[dead]
Wow, just what I wanted for Christmas. Back in the day I found VisiOn's approach fascinating since almost everything at the time was either more tightly integrated or completely unintegrated.
Maybe someone could do the the old Reason software bus based system next? As detailed in Jan 1984 Byte magazine. Lord only knows if there are surviving copies anywhere in the world.