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There was no "dbase 1", it started as "dbase 2" because Ashton Tate didn't want the product to sound premature.
by 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 agoTo 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 agodBASE 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 agoI 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 agoYou 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.