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F.O.A.D.

On 2/13/14, 5:30 PM, wrote:
On Thu, 13 Feb 2014 15:40:24 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 2/13/14, 3:25 PM, wrote:
On Thu, 13 Feb 2014 14:46:08 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 2/13/14, 12:26 PM, wrote:
On Thu, 13 Feb 2014 11:33:16 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

What were you doing computer-wise in the mid-1980s?

Writing an inventory system for our store in dBase, among other
things.
dBase was actually the application that made my computer more than a
fancy typewriter.
I played around with BASIC and ASSEMBLER a little but dBase is what
made my PC productive.
I got an early release of dBase III in the early 80s through IBM but I
didn't really use it much until the fixes made it stable.
The programming language in dBase made it possible to write a total
system but sometime you still needed a DOS call to get to some
hardware (like my bar code printer)

I don't remember why, but I ended up using R-Base.

Didn't want to spend the $400? (or whatever the A/T price was)

Most of the people using FoxBase, Xbase, Clipper or whatever just
balked at the price. I liked the dBase developer edition because you
could compile your dBase program as an EXE file and anyone could run
it. It made it a lot easier for IBM because we did not have licensing
problems when I gave programs to other offices and everyone did not
have to actually have dBase installed.
We had a pretty active dBase community in the VM forums. A couple of
my routines had fairly wide distribution.

Actually, I think I wrote a review of R-Base for PC Week, and the
software's publisher sent me a copy gratis for the review. I got most of
my software that way. I'd send clips of my reviews, and I'd get software
and review it for various publications. The software publishers never
wanted the review copies back.

These days, I am using Filemaker Pro, but it's real overkill since all I
do with it is maintain a few editorial databases for clients.

I guess you did remember then ;-)

I got most of that sort of thing from IBM although the first copy of
dBase III came from the department of agriculture. My buddy was in
charge of trying to consolidate all of their databases into a few
platforms and he was always getting evaluation software. He had a
couple copies of dBase in the shrink wrap under his desk. They were
really trying to keep these things "in the cloud" on a server they
could control with one suite of software. It never happened.
After 30 years, at that job, they had more platforms that would not
talk to each other than they had when he started with several
mainframe vendors and a bunch of PC based solutions..
You just can't teach the government new tricks and everyone has his
own empire.

I sort of remember. I certainly didn't buy R-Base. Or WordPerfect.

--
Sarah Palin is watching the Sochi Olympic Games from the front porch of
her house.