It all started with my love for Mathematics, and Operations with Matrices Transformations (the basis for Computer Graphics).  Founded and registered SCIENTIFIC SOFTWARE in 1979 in Suffolk County, NY.  Copyrighted my first extensive software creation that same year.  It was a 3-D program -written in BASIC language- that would load a matrix with the coordinates of the vertices of a pyramid or prism, or radius and height of a cylinder.  Then the program would query for parameters that were to be used to fill the Transformation matrix (scaling, rotation over X-Y-Z axis, shearing, translation ).  Simply by multiplying matrices the new “transformed” points of the solid would be calculated and plotted on the monitor’s screen.  Under your eyes the solid was moving or transforming.  That was something! All that done with 10Kb OS (ROM), and 32Kb RAM.  The "micros" we used in those days (Comordore, Apple, Radio Shack TRS 80, and Atari 800) were really rudimentary slow platforms for today’s standards. Yet, it was a lot faster than doing calculations by hand, step-by-step (as we used to do at the University a few years earlier).

Then moved into more financially rewarding venues: Business Applications.  Started to work on a “manipulator of data banks”, I do not think the term database was in use as yet.  In 1978 we would refer to these programs as manipulators of Cross-Referenced Archives.   Oracle did not exist (actually existed, Lawrence Ellison had founded it in 1977), and Bill Gates was still in the early stages of trying to start Micro-soft (as the company was named when Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded it in 1975).  INTEL and Fairchild were basically the only high-tech in Silicon Valley.  Apple and ATARI where the new kids in town (referring to San Jose and Sunnyvale, CA). 

 

Very little software existed that would run business application.  It was not easy to find somebody who would make these 5.25" diskeettes sleeves.

Living on Long Island (Wheatley Heights) and working in Manhattan’s Park Ave (British Airways) , I had to spend five hours in daily commuting, mostly on the Long Island Rail Road.  To dedicate an average of six more hours daily on my software hobbies did not leave me much time for family or sleep.  Rather than divorcing my wife opted for resigning from my airline job.  Sold my Long Island home, and relocated to Puerto Rico, where with a lower cost-of-living I could stretch the equity of the sold house. In January of 1981 I opened the doors of the new Scientific Software in Old  San Juan, PR.  Now  I could dedicate full time to my entrepreneurship! 

A serious database business application for a micro-computer was unheard off !!  Software for micros was a scarce, and a novelty.  The term software was not recognized by most people, but the term "computer program" was common.  

 

John Xuna, 32 years old (until 1986 I was known by my birthname, Juan-Modesto Álvarez-Xuna). Picture taken in 1981 soon after opened for business. Located at Recinto Sur St. in Old San Juan, PR. The "platform" and Atari 800, the monitor being an old TV connected via RF modulator.

In early 1982 I  finished a database application for dairy farmers.  It was called XUNA D.M.I.S  (it spelled X-CrossReferenced Universal Nucleolic Archive's manipulator - Dairy Management Information System).   As said before, the term database was not formally in use.   If it was in use,  I was not aware of.  The software name end up being my family's new last name: XUNA (legal name change in 1986). The program's design efficiency was achieved by a software methodology that I named "Nucleolic Programming", which has been copyrighted with the Library of Congress. More about these techiques I will eventually published at www.Nucleolic.com, domain that I have owned for more than a decade.

Due to its  novelty, several newspapers and magazines wrote articles about my venture, and the possible impact on dairy farms.  Yet, for lack of venture capital, I was forced to close down operations in 1984.  This newly emerged type of software was unfamiliar territory for venture capitalists in that Commonwealth island of Puerto Rico.

 XUNACA was the name given to the combination of hardware, plus the XUNA D.M.I.S. software