The Professional Developer

The Newsletter of the Dbase Language Professional Developers Group

September1990

Volume 1 Issue 6

Page One

Computer Incantations for

WorldPeace.

By Bob Balocca, DLaP and

VCUG Board Member

(Title borrowed from the musical

piece of the same name by Jean

Luc Ponty, Atlantic Records CD:

Individual Choices.)

Late last week, while at a meet-

ing of the DLaP Board (getting

the August newsletter in the

mail), I was casually informed

that the Page One article assign-

ment was rotated among the

Board members and that it was

my turn! Linda and Therese

quickly added that I could write

about anything I wanted. Fm

sure they didn’t really mean

anything, as I flashed on my last

river rafting trip. How about

bungee cord jumping or skydiv-

ing? Probably not relevant to the

venue, I thought.

We are, after all, a group of

application developers and

computer users. The perception

is that we are a sedate and

sedentary lot, sitting before our

screens and keyboards manipu-

lating symbols, crunching code,

making voodoo magic to some.

An activity which many would be

hard pressed to describe as

thrilling, physically demanding or

having much of a worldly impor-

tance.

A stereotypical view, certainly,

for those of us so engaged know

the truth. It takes tremendous

concentration and just plain old

hard mental work to manipulate

those symbols and turn some-

one’s computer fantasy into

working reality. Hopefully, we

have also experienced the

exhilaration of finding a particu-

larly elegant or creative solution

to a coding problem. Personally,

that is the one thing which keeps

me in touch with this business.

(It certainly isn’t the money!)

But let’s face it, there is not

much physical impact to it.

Physical stress, absolutely, but

change the world impact? No!

Well, such thoughts are long

overdue for challenge. It’s time

we demanded some respect for

our hard and creative work; our

individual ideas. There has been,

of course, a great deal of discus-

sion about the “computer revolu-

tion” and the “silicon age” and

the whale-sized wallop it is

having on our way of life and

material well being. Those social

historians who have analyzed

and documented this amazing

occurrence have done a good

job, as far as it goes. But I think

they may be understating the

case!

Did you ever consider that,

perhaps, the fall of the Berlin

Wall ultimately happened

because of a kid they called “The

Woz”? That maybe world com-

munism is falling apart because a

couple of hackers put together a

worktable personal computer? Far

fetched thinking, you say?

Perhaps, but it’s fun to think

about; impossible to prove.

There is a thread there, though,

a “Connection” (a la Alistar

Cooke).

If you can recall the mid to late

1970s, it was a bleak time for

American causes. We were in

the depths of the Cold War; we

had failed at holding back the

communist tide in Viet Main. We

were being held hostage in the

Middle East (some things never

change) and were losing our

manufacturing base and switch-

ing to a service economy at

home. It was during this time

that the two Steves, Wozniak

and Jobs, built their Apple

Computer which was to become

the first broadly marketed

personal computer.

The story is legend now, its been

told so many times. The two

Steves, of course, became

wealthy and by the early Eighties

“Big Blue” had legitimized the

“micro” and the floodgates of

personal computing were

opened. No longer were govern-

ments and large corporations the

only entities with access to

computers. I remember reading

articles decrying the “mainframe

Continued on Page 2.

LA. Fox President’s Report

by Greg Dunn

Page 4.

dClip 2.5 - To use or not to use

Reviewed by Robert Kantor

Page 5.

Builder, a batch file language

cztcnder/compiler

Reviewed by Bob Balocca

Page 8.