There are AIMs (lots of them) for example. And besides MIT and Stanford ans CMU there were also research facilities staffed with scientists, like Bell labs, Xer

There are AIMs (lots of them) for example. And besides MIT and Stanford ans CMU there were also research facilities staffed with scientists, like Bell labs, Xerox PARK, etc. In early programming (Lisps, pre-winter AI, early OO and pre-OO languages, UNIXes) have been done by much brighter people than in modern J-world.