twgonder
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- Joined
- Jul 27, 2022
- Messages
- 178
Hello, I'm Thomas (but here in Colombia, Tomás). Professionally I was known by T. Wade. I started programming in Assembly and Fortran in university in the 1970s and got addicted. My degree was in business and accounting.
I grew up in Santa Barbara, California. I spent a lot of time trying to surf, and on my dad´s boats, sailing, fishing and diving at the Channel Islands. I don't miss the cold water there. My dermatologists hates that I spent a lot of time on the tennis courts during summer vacations too.
I went to Los Angeles for university and worked at various jobs as a programmer, analyst and later sales support and training for Microdata, a minicomputer company that was part of McDonnell Douglas and its data divisions. They made the first computers that ran a version of the PICK operating system. It was a "database" oriented OS that gave you some basic files containing dictionaries for the data, a place for the data, a few utilities and a great business BASIC that integrated well with a simple, English-based query language that used the dictionaries that defined the data fields (for example: “Sort customers by lastname by firstname lastname firstname phone”. Change the word “sort” to “sselect” and you had an index that the BASIC could use to process records one at a time. As Dick Pick was fond of saying, I'll give you enough rope to hang yourself. Dick also wasn’t a fan if distributed processing and all its complications when saying, “If god had wanted brains to be distributed, he would have put them in your fingertips.” I see the wisdom as I contemplate an app that can run in field offices with a WAN that can fail at the worst of times.
And for the first year or two, I hung myself a lot while coding. However, I finally got into the swing of things and became expert in just about everything on that OD/DB that I was allowed to see. With this experience, I built an enterprise software package that handled all the usual back-office needs, as well as the software that served dozens of clients, all with their unique needs.
First, I developed my own RAD system and then went on, using the RAD to build the big commercial banking and advertising system. As far as I know, it’s still running some 36 years later, processing billions of dollars in transactions.
I first got interested in Access when it was first released. But, I had trouble transporting my past experience and designs into the new environment. I sold my interest in the company I helped found in 2001, and then I went on a long-deserved sabbatical in which paragliding became my passion. For five years I traveled in a travel trailer, flying throughout the USA, and started visiting Colombia regularly for when the flying season shut down for winter. I’ve lived as an expat in a small pueblo two hours north of Cali for the past ten years.
Recently, I started looking at Access again, for grins. I’ve wondered if I could get a new, fresh look for the app I developed many years ago. So, I’ve been poking around, reading lots of forum threads and trying little tests in Access. Much of the software I see in South America is of poor quality, obviously kluged from English-based apps, and not normalized to the degree I would like to see.
For example, I never want to see a name, address or phone number in an employee table again. Nor in a salesperson, vendor, customer contact table, etc. My first big project is figuring out how to make it multi-lingual and multi-country for names, addresses, phone and currency, etc.; and then develop the RAD design repository software that helps to standardize all things Access. Don’t you just hate changing field names, types, sized defaults, formats, captions over and over again for the same data just in different tables/fields (like long description {was it 40 or 50 bytes?})? Remember the old Access build table wizard? Now think of that on steroids.
I’ve still got a lot of things to learn, unlearn and test. So, I appreciate the help and patience with my clueless questions. But, I assure you, if you can look beyond the simple questions, you will see concepts beyond the norm that will give you pause (like my name example above).
Cheers.
P.S. How about this for using only two data tables?
I grew up in Santa Barbara, California. I spent a lot of time trying to surf, and on my dad´s boats, sailing, fishing and diving at the Channel Islands. I don't miss the cold water there. My dermatologists hates that I spent a lot of time on the tennis courts during summer vacations too.
I went to Los Angeles for university and worked at various jobs as a programmer, analyst and later sales support and training for Microdata, a minicomputer company that was part of McDonnell Douglas and its data divisions. They made the first computers that ran a version of the PICK operating system. It was a "database" oriented OS that gave you some basic files containing dictionaries for the data, a place for the data, a few utilities and a great business BASIC that integrated well with a simple, English-based query language that used the dictionaries that defined the data fields (for example: “Sort customers by lastname by firstname lastname firstname phone”. Change the word “sort” to “sselect” and you had an index that the BASIC could use to process records one at a time. As Dick Pick was fond of saying, I'll give you enough rope to hang yourself. Dick also wasn’t a fan if distributed processing and all its complications when saying, “If god had wanted brains to be distributed, he would have put them in your fingertips.” I see the wisdom as I contemplate an app that can run in field offices with a WAN that can fail at the worst of times.
And for the first year or two, I hung myself a lot while coding. However, I finally got into the swing of things and became expert in just about everything on that OD/DB that I was allowed to see. With this experience, I built an enterprise software package that handled all the usual back-office needs, as well as the software that served dozens of clients, all with their unique needs.
First, I developed my own RAD system and then went on, using the RAD to build the big commercial banking and advertising system. As far as I know, it’s still running some 36 years later, processing billions of dollars in transactions.
I first got interested in Access when it was first released. But, I had trouble transporting my past experience and designs into the new environment. I sold my interest in the company I helped found in 2001, and then I went on a long-deserved sabbatical in which paragliding became my passion. For five years I traveled in a travel trailer, flying throughout the USA, and started visiting Colombia regularly for when the flying season shut down for winter. I’ve lived as an expat in a small pueblo two hours north of Cali for the past ten years.
Recently, I started looking at Access again, for grins. I’ve wondered if I could get a new, fresh look for the app I developed many years ago. So, I’ve been poking around, reading lots of forum threads and trying little tests in Access. Much of the software I see in South America is of poor quality, obviously kluged from English-based apps, and not normalized to the degree I would like to see.
For example, I never want to see a name, address or phone number in an employee table again. Nor in a salesperson, vendor, customer contact table, etc. My first big project is figuring out how to make it multi-lingual and multi-country for names, addresses, phone and currency, etc.; and then develop the RAD design repository software that helps to standardize all things Access. Don’t you just hate changing field names, types, sized defaults, formats, captions over and over again for the same data just in different tables/fields (like long description {was it 40 or 50 bytes?})? Remember the old Access build table wizard? Now think of that on steroids.
I’ve still got a lot of things to learn, unlearn and test. So, I appreciate the help and patience with my clueless questions. But, I assure you, if you can look beyond the simple questions, you will see concepts beyond the norm that will give you pause (like my name example above).
Cheers.
P.S. How about this for using only two data tables?
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