@Anatess, there are only 2 Wizards in the cosmos... Noreen and Art. all the rest of us are Wizard Wannabes... we were there! I feel your pain..i can type much faster than figure out that gui, and the gui doesn't involve the brain at all. yuck.

I with you Anatess - I went to some GUI labs just to learn how to better use it. I too was like...you have to be kidding...I could have all that typed by now.

I guess that this is the new world, a world of not needing to know how things work, point and click and hope.....

I have said before, know the code and know how it works!

I think that will be my new mantra.

1984 for me on a CO-OP work term. I remember them saying they have this reporting software that no one knows how to use, so have at-er! Bounced around from job to job after school for a few years (I didn't have a lot of patients back then, if I got bored or ****ed off I quit). Got a consulting gig building Focus applications on MVS in 89 with a bunch of IB consultants. IB recruited me later that year and I've been there ever since.

Anyone remember SM or TOE? I don't miss TED, but I do miss TOE.

I've just pulled off my shelf Aids to System Development (1987) - remember FIDEL? - and Diagnostic Aids (1986) that actually explains the Focus error messages.... My PC FOCUS manuals are actually quite recent - 1991.

Waz used an IBM PC as his workstation - that would have been luxury! We used one as a file server - to run the whole network! - and then re-purposed it as the sync machine. I still have it in my basement, hoping it will be worth big bucks someday...

The selling point of FOCUS back in the 80's was the fact that one could develop a report in 1/10th the time of COBOL. For me, using the GUI would significantly reduce that difference.

I still have the original SYSTEMS JOURNAL that introduced the MacGyver technique. I give it to every new WebFOCUS programmer I train. It is required reading.

Speaking of old-timers, I see Greg Dorman returned to InformationBuilders last year.

His FSJ article on focexec execution is a gem. Maybe now that he's returned they'll put it back online.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: j.gross,

quote:

I still have it in my basement, hoping it will be worth big bucks someday...

Boot it up and show the grandkids, it will blow there minds, I did that with my own kids, and showed them windows 1.

quote:

Originally posted by Waz:

quote:

I still have it in my basement, hoping it will be worth big bucks someday...

Boot it up and show the grandkids, it will blow there minds, I did that with my own kids, and showed them windows 1.

This is a bit off topic, but I gotta tell ya... I have a 10-year-old kid. He loves playing minecraft - it's this java game where you can earn tools to dig mines and build stuff. Well, lots of people built tools and shares it on minecraft world as .jar files that you can then download and install on your computer.

So... my son wanted this particular set of tools and asked me plenty of times to install it for him. I have to tell you, those files are a pain in the neck to install. Some of them are just broken, others just don't play well with stuff you already installed... anyway, I was super busy and just didn't have time to dink around with his game so I told him to go ask his dad to do it (works as a server admin). A week goes by and everything was right with the world and I remembered this tool that he wanted so I asked him if he ever got his dad to install it. And my 10-year-old said, "oh, I didn't need dad after all. I installed it myself." I'm like, "WHAT? How did you install that stuff?" And... get this...

My 10-year-old said he installed it by following the instructions on youtube. YOUTUBE!

And so yes, we had a sit-down with my son to go through Computer Security 101. Youtube. I'm still shaking my head.