Computer Programming

[Chiefy_Brown]

anybody on here done any programming?
For the last 18 months, I have been using a "language" called BB2D

It is EXCELLENT and has massive support, in the form of 2 HUGE websites, which contain:
tutorials
forums
archives
worklogs
updates
....the list goes on

<a href="http://www.blitzcoder.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002437.html" target="_blank">NOW the price of BB3D has fallen to a low of

[Mike Tx]

I wrote the program I use in my business and sold it to several other shops for a good bit a copy. The original program was custom written for a company and I was paid a better bit over time to do it. It wasn't worth it really, but I learned a lot. It took me 4 or 5 years to get where it needed to be, and it has about 50,000 lines of code. It is written in PowerBasic v.3.2 and some assembly language.

It works very well for me as it tracks invoices, A/R, Gen accounting, customer history, vendors, clients, plus an extensive parts database etc. etc.

I hold the copyright to it as well.

<small>[ 06-16-2003, 08:21 PM: Message edited by: Mike Tx ]</small>

[Chiefy_Brown]

wow that is INCREDIBLE Mike, very interesting indeed! what an achievement for sure!

so, following that... are you tempted to do anymore programming? :cool: I guess that you never heard of blitzBASIC eh?

Mike, have a visit over to my TOP coding site of all time <a href="http://www.blitzcoder.com" target="_blank">http://www.blitzcoder.com</a> it is a magic place for sure, with your coding prowess I think you'd "enjoy" quite a few of the threads on there too! :D

[Mike Tx]

NO, I don't mess around with it too much anymore. It's too hard to write a real complex program by yourself. The debugging of it is a major pita, and testing it is another problem. THis program is designed to run over a local area network as well, and the problems involved in error trapping and coding to eliminate "busy Signals" and work station ties ups are enormous. If I had a staff to help me I may have been in that business instead of car repair, but that's how I let it work out.

It's a DOS based application, and while I toyed with the idea of re-writing it in Visual Basic or C++, I relived the horrors of it, and quickly came to my senses. I still have those compilers and play around some with them. I even wrote a program to translate phone letters in phone numbers. You know, you see an advertisment, and they say, "just call 1-800 DELIVER" or something. So I wrote a program to translate those words into the phone number just for grins.

Oh yeah! One of my customers called up and asked me why he had to press the "A" key to exit a print function. I said want are you talking about? He said that the program says to press the "A" key to exit. I ran the program where I was, and said, no sir, what it says is to "press a key". What a dummass. True story. I had lots of calls like that.

[DaveInTx]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Mike Tx:
<strong>Oh yeah! One of my customers called up and asked me why he had to press the "A" key to exit a print function. I said want are you talking about? He said that the program says to press the "A" key to exit. I ran the program where I was, and said, no sir, what it says is to "press a key". What a dummass. True story. I had lots of calls like that.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Lots of stuff like that happen. We have had people inquire where the "any" key is, for the same reason. BTW, I am a COBOL programmer on the mainframe for Texas Instruments.

DaveInTx

[Chaplain Keppy]

Friend of mine who does computer repair tells me about a customer who thought the CD rack was a built in cup holder.

:rolleyes:

[Chiefy_Brown]

hey I've got one of those built in cupholders <a href="http://www.carsource.co.uk/photos/vave997.jpg" target="_blank">in my own car THE Vauxhall Vectra!!!</a>
great! in fact there are 2, they swivel out for both front seat occupants, but regrettably they don't accept CDs to play :(

DaveInTX
do you know how FAR 'COBOL' dates back dude?
Believe it or not, in 1975 I was finishing off "A" level Computer Science at Merton Tech and Cobol alongside Fortran, was one of 3 top high level languages, that we used to produce programming "solutions" to pass the exam!! :cool:

[Sparky]

I am always havening a funny time with George!
<a href="http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/" target="_blank">http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/</a>

Verbal Judo CHOP you stoopid LUSER!
<a href="http://www.techcomedy.com/calls/calls.htm" target="_blank">http://www.techcomedy.com/calls/calls.htm</a>
(featuring adds for your very own RED STAPLER!!)

Store files in the Recycle Bin! :D
<a href="http://www.techtales.com/tftechs.html" target="_blank">http://www.techtales.com/tftechs.html</a>

[Mike Tx]

I'm havening problens playering the mp3's.

[DaveInTx]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Chiefy_Brown:
<strong>DaveInTX
do you know how FAR 'COBOL' dates back dude?
Believe it or not, in 1975 I was finishing off "A" level Computer Science at Merton Tech and Cobol alongside Fortran, was one of 3 top high level languages, that we used to produce programming "solutions" to pass the exam!! :cool: </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yes, I am very much aware of how far back COBOL goes. Do you have any idea how far back I go? When I took my first programming course back in 1959, the computers available to me (the most modern was an IBM 650) did not even support COBOL! Whether COBOL is old or not is not the question. It has been said that there are more than 70 Billion lines of COBOL code still running most of the worlds large financial organizations, and there is a reason for that--COBOL was expressly written to process business-oriented information with decimal-precision arithmetic (so beloved by accountants and auditors!)--no binary round-off errors. Add to that the fact that it is a language almost uniquely easy to understand and modify (no complex oddball character strings like "regular expressions" that you have to memorize and will not know what they are supposed to be doing 6 months after you write them). Most of the newer languages need a lot of external documentation to enable maintenance, especially with the high turnover in programmers. Unfortunately, most programmers absolutely hate to write documentation and so it rarely is properly done. I make no apologies for being almost exclusively a COBOL programmer. I support a lot of code written in that language (at TI) and will be retiring soon, so I don't feel any great need to diversify. That is good, because TI actually needs me to be expert in what I currently know--I am right now the only person in my department that has any idea how to fix some pretty important logic used continually by the company (and written in house). I am also past 65 years old with 22 years employed here, so I can retire any time I feel like it (or endangered).

DaveInTx :D

[Monty Ealerman]

Dave(s):

I've been programming since 1971. I was 13 that year. My first machine was an IBM System 370-158 running MVS. I started out with a Model 29 keypunch machine and a TTY 110 terminal. The 110 refers to the data transfer rate, in case anyone thinks 56K modems are slow. I like assembly language coding.

For the past 2 decades or so I've been an MVS Systems Programmer. I have a corporation that is currently registered with IBM as a S-390 Development Partner. If you're interested, you can review my posts on <a href="http://www.mvshelp.com" target="_blank">mvshelp.com</a>

It's great to learn that you guys are coders.

Regards,

Monty

<small>[ 06-25-2003, 02:55 AM: Message edited by: Monty Ealerman ]</small>

[Sparky]

C:/DOS
C:/DOS/RUN
RUN/DOS/RUN

:D

[PeacefulDragon]

LMAO! :D