4 ms·

I remember the first Access version. Wasn't cheap (for my budget at the time) and I got it as a birthday gift. Wasn't my first contact with database (dBase III

I remember the first Access version. Wasn't cheap (for my budget at the time) and I got it as a birthday gift. Wasn't my first contact with database (dBase III Plus, anyone?) but came with 5 huge manuals that covered a lot of relational databases, and was where I first heard of normalizations rules. If it was easy for a teen in the first months with a computer, must be easy nowadays for any non-tech person who doesn't receive enought attention from IT because building a system would cost too much for each sprint/function points/hours. And it won't die unless things like that change.

GrumpyNl 7y ago
I started to write with Dbase 1 and 2
- steveeq1 7y ago
  There was no "dbase 1", it started as "dbase 2" because Ashton Tate didn't want the product to sound premature.
  - teh_klev 7y ago
    To be fair, they probably mean dBase II and dBase III. Although they could mean Vulcan and dBase II, which is less likely. I started my "database" programming career on dBase II in the early 80's and never bumped into Vulcan.
    - tabtab 7y ago
      dBASE III and dBASE III+ were different enough that they are generally considered two different "big release" products. I used to automate a lot of grunt work by putting code in dBASE tables. It's real easy to do that. You can make a sophisticated menu system using mostly just tables with code embedded. I was quite productive back then without having to type a lot.
      - teh_klev 7y ago
        I remember when dBase III+ shipped, there were some nice new features though we moved over to Clipper when that launched and completely avoided the "joy" of dBase IV. I did also try out another couple of compilers called Quicksilver and dBXL, but Clipper ate their lunch. I wrote quite a few tens of thousands of lines of code in Clipper (using the BRIEF editor) all the way up until ~1998. By then I'd more or less switched to VB+SQL Server. Gotta say I really loved working with Clipper, it was a really nice superset of dBase but had many of it's own specific design features.
  - GrumpyNl 7y ago
    You are right, it was 2 then 3 then clipper for me, it has been a while. The compiling with clipper took around 45 minutes, we always went to the cafe to play some billiards in the waiting time.

GrumpyNl 7y ago

I started to write with Dbase 1 and 2

steveeq1 7y ago
There was no "dbase 1", it started as "dbase 2" because Ashton Tate didn't want the product to sound premature.
- teh_klev 7y ago
  To be fair, they probably mean dBase II and dBase III. Although they could mean Vulcan and dBase II, which is less likely. I started my "database" programming career on dBase II in the early 80's and never bumped into Vulcan.
  - tabtab 7y ago
    dBASE III and dBASE III+ were different enough that they are generally considered two different "big release" products. I used to automate a lot of grunt work by putting code in dBASE tables. It's real easy to do that. You can make a sophisticated menu system using mostly just tables with code embedded. I was quite productive back then without having to type a lot.
    - teh_klev 7y ago
      I remember when dBase III+ shipped, there were some nice new features though we moved over to Clipper when that launched and completely avoided the "joy" of dBase IV. I did also try out another couple of compilers called Quicksilver and dBXL, but Clipper ate their lunch. I wrote quite a few tens of thousands of lines of code in Clipper (using the BRIEF editor) all the way up until ~1998. By then I'd more or less switched to VB+SQL Server. Gotta say I really loved working with Clipper, it was a really nice superset of dBase but had many of it's own specific design features.
- GrumpyNl 7y ago
  You are right, it was 2 then 3 then clipper for me, it has been a while. The compiling with clipper took around 45 minutes, we always went to the cafe to play some billiards in the waiting time.