Re: Poll: How Many Delphi Users Did or Did Not Learn Pascal At University?

From: Phyllis Helton (phyllis.helton_at_nospam.jesusfilm.org)
Date: 10/22/04 

Date: 22 Oct 2004 08:47:54 -0700

Mark J. Wallin wrote:

> school at which time I learned FORTRAN simply to do my thesis work on
> a grand old Burroughs B5500, a wonderful (but slow as molasses) 48k
> machine (beat the hell out of the IBM 360 if you actually wanted to

Hey, my dad helped to design the Burroughs machines back in the 60s and
70s. I haven't heard that name in a long time, because he went on to
designing fighter planes for Hughes/Raytheon from there. <g>

We got an Osborne when I was 12 or 13. It was a "portable" computer
that weighed quite a bit. It had a four or five inch screen in the
center of two floppy drives. I used that to write quite a few term
papers, though by then I think we had upgraded to having an external
monitor that must have been at least a 10" screen.

I only played in a programming class in high school. It was a study at
your own pace, but there were a group of us (including the teacher) who
ended up spending more time talking over issues and events than
actually learning anything. I think I learned enough there to write a
basic "Phyllis was here" endless loop on the computers at the stores.
<g>

>From there I used the computer just to play around in dBase a little
and do data entry at one job, but it wasn't until I started working for
a cheap boss that I learned to program. We had a database in RBase
that was terribly designed. One of our corporate folks bought us a
copy of Paradox 3 or 4 (for DOS). I knew there had to be a better way
than how we were using the RBase system, so I brought both the manuals
home to see what could be done. Paradox appeared to me to be the best
option, but I knew my boss would never consent to paying $500 for
licenses for the whole office, so instead I somehow convinced him to
buy the $100 runtime version and let me program an interface for a
re-designed system.

The rest is history, and now I'm playing with Oracle and Delphi and
glad to be!! 

-- 
Phyllis

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