The Story of AMOS

Welcome to this next attempt at creating a regular blog! I have so many things to tell about AMOS and how this product has changed my life, and is continuing to do so even today...

Being a programmer with a logical mind, I will expose first the goals and plan of this blog.

GOAL: tell the whole story about the creation of AMOS Basic and its consequences on my life and the life of others... up to Pixel Party 2018.

- To explain why I was at Pixel Party, I need to talk about Friend and Friend Software Labs and my encounter with Hogne Titlestad, David Pleasance and the team, Robert Lapinsky, Olaf Krinsky and all amazing Poland,
- To talk about Friend, I need to talk about the revival of the Amiga at Amiga 30 UK (for me),
- To talk about this, I need to talk about my life before. My life before can be defined by the products, machines and people I have been working with, in reverse order....
- Clickteam Fusion, how to be right on-time on Steam despite a summer in hell,
- Multimedia Fusion, and the runtimes on all platforms that saved a company,
- Jamagic, my failed attempt at creating HTML5 five years too early, and the beginning of my depression,
- Corel Multimedia Fusion and the 1.5 million dollar check in one single day story, and the next one with IMSI,
- The Games Factory, the largest product physically on shelves in UK in computer shops, how to take the wrong 'multimedia' path and loose your vision,
- Klik and Play and my association with Yves Lamoureux and Francis Poulain that would lead to Clickteam,
- AMOSPro Compiler and its massive delay, and the danger of going 'over the top' for a programmer,
- AMOSPro, how to choose the worse name for a good product,
- Easy AMOS, the 'little seller' as Richard Peacock used to call it at Europress,
- AMOS Compiler, meeting Jean Baptiste Bolcato, my first employee,
- AMOS, how to change your world in a corner of a barrack, while pretending to be a vet,
- STOS Compiler, how to make difficult things look simple,
- STOS, the first ever game engine on computers, and my encounter with Europress and Richard Vanner, Meash, Chris and all the team in Manchester,
- Captain Blood, with real geniuses like Yves Lamoureux, Philippe Ulrich and Didier Bouchon,
- The TO7, the most horrible machine chosen by the French government and the reason of the failure of the 'Plan Informatique pour Tous' in France,
- My trip to the USA in summer 1986 and the writing of 'Abner's Bible Tales' in a over-heated garage on CBM64 in Colorado Spring with Jim Cuomo and his very Italian mother, my cousin Khena and the upmost incredible moment of my life, 
- The 'JAWX' period, and how easily geeks can be manipulated by great guys who did not realize that they were doing it, and the horrible trial that followed and polluted by life for so many years,
- All the cool systems we used for cheating in vet school, you won't believe it,
- The Oric period, and the discovery of what a personal computer could be, and my very first commercial product, Driver, worth 'five products to choose in our catalog',
- The Ohio Scientific Superboard II my first real computer bought the year when entering Vet studies in France just-to-please-my-mother,
- The TI57, my first programmable device at school and how I felt against the lucky owners of a HP41c showing off in math courses,
- Fisher-Technics, the incredible toy that allowed me to create so many stupid machines,
- My life as a child, and all the good memories in me forever.

Stories will come back as I write. There will be personal stories, failures, attempts, successes etc... I will let it flow, and this 'reverse-plan' is just an indication of the milestones of my 'mentally-agitated-while-looking-normal-to-the-outside' life...

Stay tuned! I will do my best to write one story per week, every Sunday morning... or afternoon depending on the evening before. 😉

Start of the show, next Sunday! A trip to Antibes on the French Riviera, at the time where it was still beautiful and livable and where I spent the best holidays for an imaginative kid! 

Francois