Software development for a 60 year old
I can still remember unpacking the dual disk PCs we got at Kadena AB in Okinawa Japan back in the mid 80s. What were they, and what were we to do with them. The next day they removed our cardpunch machine.
Everyday in the fuels accounting office a few of use, broken down by product (jet fuel, auto fuel, diesel) would keypunch a few hundred cards representing the sales of the day before. Then we would run them through a card reader, get any errors later that day at main supply where the Univac was located, and fix things at a terminal there.
That’s how I started my career as a programmer. Hot off the flight line, refueling planes, I promoted my way out of driving a fuel truck, and was sent to accounting school, and then this. How were we going to input hundreds of transactions a day on these things.
After a few days of struggling with the “new” software that would let us enter everything in 80 columns and save to a floppy, with no magic provided by the programs on our old keypunch machines, a few of use found old keypunch machines in different areas of the base, and would “borrow” them for an hour to get our work done.
Eventually they all disappeared too, and we were left with “software”, whatever that was.
By this time I was in charge of the accounting office. It was on me to make it better. So I searched the 180 fuels people we had on base and low and behold I found a “nerd”. He was hidden on mid shift, put as far away from other humans as possible. I wouldn’t even have to trade one of my troops for him, I just had to “housebreak” him.
He was into computers, and had studied some esoteric languages of the early 80s, and wrote us a neat little program that made us all forget about the old keypunch machines. This wasn’t so bad after all.
Eventually, I had to let him go. He turned out to be to feral to train. The accounting office was a high profile place, and I couldn’t hide him anywhere.
Shortly after I found out about D-base, but it didn’t really have what I wanted, a compiler. Then I learned of Clipper. It was the summer of 87, and Clipper was all the rage. It was like D-base, but you didn’t need D-Base. It made real executables, and it was endlessly customizable by ingenious add on libraries. Eventually I became a “real” programmer.
I could make anything, I thought. I could store data in DBF files, they had indexes that made everything seem so fast. Heck, I could boot from one disk, then on the second I could fit the program and a whole days work.
Eventually we got hard drives, and we could just use the floppy to store each day. We had boxes of floppies, each replacing boxes of paper forms we had to store. It was like a dream come true.
Leap ahead 10 years, and Clipper was creating Windows apps. We did networking, and I had built software that replaced all the forms, and increased turn time on aircraft refueling. I was given a prime slot at the Pentagon, and I thought I was on top of the world, with many thanks to Clipper!
Alas, I discovered that I was at the Pentagon to help the design center in Montgomery Alabama redevelop what I had built. Ugh, the dark side of development.
I retired the next year, and continued development eventually pushing the suite of products I had developed to every military installation in the world. DOD wide!
Then, working as a sub to a sub to a Small Business front on a government contract got the best of me. I basically lost everything. But, I was also deep into Delphi, and Oracle, and again, I thought I could build anything!
I went to work for a company and they handed over the maintenance of an old system which I eventually talked them into letting me reengineer in Delphi.
Ahh Delphi! Was there ever a better development tool? It was like Clipper was, with an endless community base, and libraries to do just about anything! I was in heaven. For 18 years it was my daily development environment.
Then, 3 days after the lockdown in California for covid, I was let go. The company I worked for had decided they didn’t want to do anymore work on the Delphi product, and instead were going full steam ahead on their web product (which had been in development for 17 years). Ugh!
I had been looking for the tool to take me to the end of my road for years. I knew that Delphi was showing it’s age. Year by year, Oracle, then SQL Server upgrade by upgrade. Windows upgrades…
Over the years I had picked up acting. Local theater stuff, nothing too high brow. I was studying for a part playing Sherlock Holmes in, An Evening with Sherlock Holmes. There was a line that had the word “Flutter” in it, and I was having one heck of a time with that line. Then, while doing my daily search for the perfect tool, I ran across Google’s Flutter/Dart framework, with a compiler. A new language built for phones! Wow, this looked cool.
I started taking a Udemy class in Flutter a week before I was let go. Then I amped up my study time and engaged people in the field I had been developing in, and tried to find my feet.
I thank the government and frankly Nancy Pelosi who pushed through the $600 a week bump in unemployment, for the life line. What I found out, and knew all along, no one is hiring 62 year old developers.
Right about then Google released Flutter Web. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) were within my reach. Zero friction upgrades, cloud databases, a whole new world opened up for me at 62.
I have since developed a process management tool called Orpheus (www.OrpheusApp.com), and my final covid project a Script Memorizer, and play management tool (www.ScriptMemorizer.com). I also completed my masters certification in Configuration Management and will start teaching the process management tool later this year. Of course I’m also using the script memorizer daily learning my lines for Dracula. My whole cast is using the program, and it’s the neatest thing since the yellow highlighter for memorizing a script, no less managing the play.
If you were keeping up I’m somewhere north of 34 years developing software now. I love where I am development wise. From getting the Airforce to shell out the money for Clipper, to a development environment that has literally cost me nothing. A community second to none, with libraries (now they call them packages) to do just about anything, and a language that is about as friendly as they get.
I started learning Google’s Golang, why not, right? So, I think my story isn’t over. Heck, it’s just beginning, all over again.
Thanks for reading!