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Hi,
First of all I deem it an honor that I was invited to participate in this site. My being here is a good example of the Peter Principal at work and I stand in awe of the company I'm keeping.
The first computer I ever had to deal with looked like a small room out of one of those 3D shoot-em-ups and you had to punch holes in pieces of cardboard to get it to do anything! It was a mastodon with blinking lights, whirring tapes and card-punch consoles the size of rolltop desks. We used it to produce the biweekly payroll for the USS Shangri-La CVA38 and it was debatable if the computer was faster than doing it manually or not! The one indisputable fact was that it was a lot cooler in "the computer room" than anywhere else on the ship so all was not lost!
My next experience came in a club in Italy. Space Invaders was a new, hot invention called a "video game" and they still hadn't been introduced in the USofA! It left me mesmerized.
Years later, in the mid '80s, the credit union I was working for decided to enter the computer age and install four IBM XT's, a humongous 30MB server and a modem in my branch office. (Talk about being on the edge of technology!) Not being one to panic I raced out and purchased a Commodore 64, color monitor, floppy drive and a few other accouterments within the hour! With the help of a friend we put the thing together after work. That night (yes, all night) was spent playing Load Runner. (This was even better than Space Invaders!) Some of the next evening was spent a bit more productively with my nose in a book on programming the C64 and I've never quit! You can read all about it in my forthcoming book, "How to Get Totally Hooked in 36 Hours".
From those early days of building programs to help my teacher wife keep track of her students' grades until this, I'm enthralled with programming, video games and computing in general. It is mind boggling how far things have come from those days of punch-cards to today's ultra fast CPUs, and the games just go off the scale.
PowerBASIC is my primary language today but I also struggle with assembly and have a good knowledge of MUMPS. Like I said earlier, I started with BASIC and really admire the language and the way it has grown from those early days. Where once it was for students, beginners and amateurs it has evolved into a powerful multipurpose tool without losing its ability to be successfully used by those who it originally targeted. BASIC is still the most common language on the computer.
My forte in programming is user interface. I firmly believe that 70% of a good program's code deals with keeping the user safe from him/herself, making the user's input as simple and foolproof as possible, and getting the information back out to the user in as useful a format as can be. That includes culling spurious data and keeping the info-glut to a minimum. Too much information is, IMHO, more destructive than no data because if an intelligent person has no data (s)he will acquire it before (s)he acts. Too much data may lead to poor decisions because the human brain just can't process raw data like a computer and most people don't have time to sift through tomes of printouts.
Another bugaboo of mine is clean, legible code. I'm still supporting programs I wrote 8 and 9 years ago; updating, bug-chasing, and vertical modifications. Without well written, remarked code this would be an impossible task. But, thanks to several people that helped me when I was getting started, I've developed some good habits and they have saved me uncountable, frustrating hours in front of the monitor.
In fact many, many people have given me a helping hand with my programming and that, I guess, is why I'm here. I feel that I owe something back so now it's my turn to provide the helping hand where I can. My thanks to Dave Navarro for providing me with the opportunity to reach out to those who would seek my assistance.
d83)
ANAGRAM-A-RAMA - v 1.1b A small game for Windows 9x - File size 283k
GETKEY - A "how and why" discussion of centralized keyboard/mouse input
fGETKEYI - The code and values to convert incoming keystrokes to INTEGERS
fGETKEYS - The code and values to use incoming keystrokes as STRINGS
QBinput - INPUT$ replacement routine for Qbasic.
FBinput - INPUT$ replacement routine for FirstBasic.
CCinput - Field input routine for PowerBASIC Console Compiler.
DACSTUF1 - First in a 3 part series of how to use the DAC to read/write/set the pallet colors
DACSTUF2 - Part 2, the code.
DACSTUF3 - Part 3, a couple of tricks I use to punch up SCREEN 12
SORTS - Several search and sort routines I've collected over the years.
FILEPARS - Opens and reads large ASCii files in BINARY mode for display and changes.
MDELAY - A micro-timer accurate to aprox. 1/1000th of a second.
PCOPY - Copies one text page to another (FB, PB)
TPRINT - Fast & tricky text printing ( FB, PB)
HUFFMAN - Huffman string (de)compression functions with tutorial (PB)
HUFMN-cc - Huffman string (de)compression functions with tutorial (PB/cc)
RAYPOINT - Compute the pixel address from the center to any point on the circle (PB)
V12PRINT - Print text to SCREEN 12 in any combination of foreground & background. (PB 3.5)
fDirTree - create and maintain an X-Tree list for a given drive. (PB/cc)
DriveNFO - Routines to gather information on drives. Size, Type, Freespace, etc. (PB/cc)
Dates-cc - Pack and unpack dates from LONG integers. (PB/cc)
Dates-QB - Pack and unpack dates from LONG integers. (QB)
ASCchart.EXE - Display chart and export ASCii values to the clipboard WIN9x & NT. (16k)
fMenus.ZIP - static and drop-down menu drivers (PB/cc)
PBccPRNT - Routines to use Windows' print spooler & available fonts (PB/cc)
PrimeGEN - Prime number generator that works up to 4 Quintillion. (PB/cc)
SoundEX Keys - A complete SounedEX keyfile system. (PB/cc)
For PowerBASIC v3.2 
For PowerBASIC v3.5
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