“While it’s hard to convey briefly the historical weight Xanadu
hefts, its Web site summarizes it nicely: “Founded 1960: The
Original Hypertext Project.” That’s right — 30 years before
Tim Berners-Lee passed around his Web proposals, Ted Nelson was
working out a hypertext system from which we still have a lot to
learn.”
“It’s not just that Xanadu is a fantastic creative achievement,
though; it’s also infamous as the tardiest software ever. It’s been
nearly ready to ship numerous times since the 1970s.
“And it finally happened, just a few days ago. Nelson and his
team demonstrated Xanadu and passed out its source code(!).”
“It promises to be an excellent demonstration of how Python
fares in a high-performance, large-scale, complex role that many
programmers believe is reserved for C++ and Java.”