fp Avg Developer/User age

Thu Jan 4 14:20:44 PST 2018

Bill,

My first program was written for my business and I used to travel with the floppy disks.  I never needed to have a computer as most store managers allowed me to use their computers.  They were thrilled to have someone suing the computer to do actual work.  I had written and order entry and invoicing program in profile.  Most customers who came in while I was working would ask questions and then purchaser a computer system.  

When I rewrote the program for Profile 16 I was able to add a lot of functionality.  I eventually sold that business but not the program.  

It is interesting as I was looking for a database program at a computer show and was looking at ProFile and dBase.  For my order program I wanted, as I originally planned, 107 fields.  The dBase person told me that I could only have 33 fields but Profile allow for 99 fields.  The dBase folks never mentioned that it was a relational database.  I did purchase all of the add-ons for Profile including the lookup program.  

There was one issue which I had to overcome the lookup program and math64 (I think) were incompatible. I had one program with the math program installed and another with the lookup installed.  I had to be careful about which disk I used.  The print drivers I wrote allowed me to change from wide-bar to letter or legal and set the font to be used.  That was one of the big advantages to Profile 16.

filePro have come a long way from those days.  The learning curve is much bigger today with all of the functionality that has been added.

Richard

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Filepro-list [mailto:filepro-list-
> bounces+rkreiss=verizon.net at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf Of Bill Campbell via
> Filepro-list
> Sent: Thursday, January 4, 2018 3:39 PM
> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
> Subject: Re: fp Avg Developer/User age
> 
> 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
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