fp Avg Developer/User age

[Bill Campbell]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2018, Richard Kreiss via Filepro-list wrote:

>Looks like am the old man at 74.

Moi aussi.

>Started programming on a model 2 (1980) with profile and h ad to learn how
>to write print drive in assembler to use with my 9 pin dot matrix printer.
>Replaced the Model 2 with a Model 16 and the hard drive with Xenix and
>Profile 16.

That's similar to my experience on Microcomputers after I quit racing cars
full time in 1980.  I started working with computers in February 1966 as a
Jr. Electrical Engineer at Bendix Radio, but all my experience was on
mainframes, programming in FORTRAN, Assembly, ALGOL, COBOL, BPL, and
various other languages between 1966 and 1976 when I quit to race.

I went to work at a Radio Shack in October 1980 as an undercover computer
marketing rep. in a small store in northern Virginia that didn't have an
'X' department.  The store manager was a corner worker and EMT at the
sports car races who wanted me to sell Model IIs which weren't really
authorized at his store, but Joe Collazo, the District Manager, had an
office in his store, and would approve anything I sold.  I read several
years of Byte magazine to get familiar with Micros.

In January 1981 I moved to a Radio Shack at 19th and K streets in D.C.
that had an 'X' department, working to Kevin Fowler and Ron Cohen, and was
supposed to take over managing the 'X' department when Kevin and Ron went
to the new Radio Shack Computer Center (RSCC) that was being built on M
Street a block or so from this store.  John Esak was a computer marketing
rep. at the new RSCC when it opened, and I learned a lot from him about FP
and Profile II then.

I left Radio Shack in October 1983 when one of my customers hired me to be
V.P. of his software company in Seattle to develop software for the
building and construction industry where we were working in Xenix on the
Model 6000.  I did a lot of work with FilePro 16 there, integrating it with
Radio Shack's version of RealWorld accounting software.  I left that
company at the end of 1984, and started Celestial Software working closely
with Don Mackay at the local RSCC to develop FP software for his business
customers.  I met Laura Brody at one of Don's seminars (she blasted me for
posting about ABE=ASCII on a Usenet or Compuserve group saying it was
proprietary :-).

I worked extensively with FP developing software for a large appliance
retail store near Seattle, but ran into the too many files limitations on
Xenix, and moved my system to the Unify RDBMS where this wasn't an issue
although it required I write all my code in 'C'.

>Small Computer was located on 41st street at the time which was just around
>the corner form my office on 40th St and 7th Ave in NYC.

...

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www2.celestial.com/ PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Mobile:         (206) 947-5591  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
Fax:            (206) 232-9186  Skype: jwccsllc

Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of
all industry and commerce.  -- James A. Garfield