Computer Programs...Anyone Made Any?

[John Rogers]

Now and then we have posts about computer issues or questions or to gather ideas. I am curious how many of you have actually made a program(s) that solve a particular problem or help others to get something done? Here's mine:

In 1985 I had retired from the US Navy and was starting to work for the US Navy at 32 Street Navy Base as a "computer technician" which covered everything. Where I was working we had those tan colored Zenith Z248s and most programs were text based. We came up with the idea to hold noon hour computer classes on the PC, applications, operating system and actually some security. One of the other guys (no women yet) has nearly blind and he used a huge screen so he could write databases (DB2) but not help with the classes as he could not see those Zenith displays well. My Assembler Language class at night covered how to manipulate various areas of a PCs memory, including B000 and B800 which is where PCs do their display calculations. A close check with a magnifying glass and a check in my Microsoft hardware reference showed that any letter or number was made of what are called "Pixels", usually 6x9 for standard sized text.

About this time the Borland Company had sold a suite of small apps including a small text editor and memory manipulator called a TSR or Terminate Stay Resident so you could write up a small Assembler to hot-key in and increase the number of pixels so text could be as big as you wanted and later drop it back to regular size.

So after I did the program I had Michael test it and he made characters so large only TWO fit on the small Zenith display so now he could also teach. I decided to make this a "shareware program" and put a standard bit of text about donating $$$ if you liked it. Well about 4 months later I got a letter from a fellow in New Foundland who was using my little program to make the text larger on the screen he had running a shortwave radio display showing his transmits and received information. Wow there was also a check for $25 and I was overjoyed for sure.

Today now you can use the system parts of the OS to change text but I'll never forget that letter and check.
John Rogers the old racer

[Alan A]

One or two in my time….

The simpler ones usually have the greatest ROI.

Like an in memory cache that halved the IO/s rate and saved a two million dollar disk upgrade. Two hundred or so lines of assembler…

That was back when IO/s was the metric on how disk controllers was sold and when $2M was actual money.

[id10t]

Yes, and I've had my work used by others... Some of my mom's office billing sofware in the 80s/90s (turbopascal), and my big Achievement Accomplished for a Free Software loving developer.



Also a very generic but full featured form2mail script that had a couple hundred downloads and users

Always made my homework stuff try to be as interesting and feature complete as possible (it was mostly a cake walk so I had to challenge myself on projects and such), so things like a blackjack game that had the option to turn on display of a few methods of card counting and fiddle with shoe size as well as display actual statistics based on what cards were in deck (interesting to compare between the counting methods and the "well, we've looked at the deck and calculated...")

[id10t]

Not to mention the many many things I've done and do daily for the college as part of work.

Student records, human resources stuff, payroll stuff, user access rights stuff, course enrollment in our online delivery system, ETL import/export operations between various 3rd parties including state and fed agencies...

This weeks work included finding all students that were first generation in college and first time in college, tagging them in our attribute management system, and auto-enrolling them into a online community/resource course (new java Spring framework). Fiddled with an export to a 3rd party vendor (add a column of data) (older Java on websphere), Created a scheduled task that will fiddle with our dual enrollment students so when they return as regular students they'll need to re-prove residency, etc (new java Spring framework). Set things so when a highest ed level is changed or a program is changed by someone in registrars office it kicks off an automatic program change effective either immediately or at end of term (in our ancient EGL/VG stack... ugh). Quick and dirty import of a CSV file with 30k records into our DB2 database (Spring again)

[KFC911]

After college, I don't think I ever wrote a "program" in the traditional sense and they were always "code" infrastructure, automation, etc. ... as I was a systems/OS/Network geek ... l don't do Windows or applications .

Systems Programmer ... that was a generic description of my former bleeding edge IT career ... I wore a bunch of different pointy dunce caps the whole time... lots of flavors ... rarely wrote any code ... but I "could" ... and sometimes "did". I could "program" with the best of the best, but knew "programming" wasn't gonna be my career .... taking Fortran 101 back in '78

Microcode at IBM (Advanced Communications R&D at RTP) fresh outta college ... just the beginning of my IT stories ...

I programmed a bit over my career ... but it was just "necessary stuff" ... to get something done... from bit manipulation to automating huge data centers ... I lived it ... then ...

I quit

[wdfifteen]

I wrote some FORTRAN routines back in the early 80s. One was used to calculate the heat dissipation of a battery. The others were all machine control programs.

[David]

Only Visual Basic Excel macros but the AI post got me thinking...

[flipper35]

Back in the 80s I wrote a CAD program since I thought I was going into engineering and could not afford buying one. Wrote several games for the same reason. Favorite was a drag racing game split screen. All of that made me the first of 10 types of people, those that understand binary. Also assembly. Ick.

Did a ballistic trajectory program in my engineering class in college. I do NOT miss FORTRAN and Wyse terminals.

Professionally did some programming for web to proprietary database connections.

[flatbutt]

Do Excel macros count? If so I've done a bunch.

[John Rogers]

Wow we have some really old folks here as I read what everyone did. As long as the object you did gave results or solved a problem or made someone happy it was good programming. Thanks guys for the info.

I did write a program when the newest version of Basic came out.....Visual Basic and it was a vehicle speed calculator using motor RPM + Which gear + Tire size + Ring and Pinion size. We were doing some Porsche Club San Diego rallies and they would list various speeds at various times but out 1987 - 930 had oversize wheels/tires so this allowed us to drive by the tach and not speedometer. Oh yeah we won several before they moved us up a class.
John Rogers the oldracer

[fanaudical]

I've written several programs for school / work for solving specific math/engineering problems.

Most of my text-based code is for CAD macros (old LiSP stuff). I've written a bunch of machine/automation control code in RLL across various platforms if that counts for anything...

[Shaun @ Tru6]

In a previous life 1999, I learned VB and SQL and got a job with a boutique firm. My first project was to create a catalog printing calculator for Federated Department Stores: Bloomingdales, Macy's and 10 or so others. Corporate wanted to control how catalogs and flyers were printed with full cost analysis given set up and run rate cost data from 7 major printers in the country.

Creating it was one of the most fun and interesting things I've done in my life. Behind the UI was SQL-driven data flow, step by step populating cobmoboxes based on previous selections, turning radio button on and off or popping up checkboxes to guide the user along so even a 5 year old could spec a complex catalog with flyers, inserts, etc and get the best printing price balanced against shipping.

God that was so much fun.

So much more to the story like the consulting firm had absolutely no idea what they were doing and the young, very hot consultant was sleeping with a Federated VP.

[Scott Douglas]

I taught myself VB when I was asked to come up with a way to estimate the cost of machined parts based on the drawings.
It was a lot of fun and I was able to get into it to the tune of a four deep if/then statement that even the in-house programmer was impressed with to the point he offered me a job.

[Zeke]

I got a TRS 80 to print one letter. That took commands but seemed like code to me in 1980. It was purchased by a grandparent for the kids. They never figured it out.

[JavaBrewer]

I contributed to many desktop applications and server side components. Mostly written in Java - where my PP username originates. It has been an exciting 35 years in that industry. My main efforts were with the DoD, nothing else I can speak to.

I did some mobile app development on Android and iOS for commercial efforts as well. Totally different material and peers, most were tied to academia and were almost as smart as the other communities I worked with.

No regrets.