SPAM-LOW: Re: XT 5160

Revelation was written as a near singlehanded effort by a man named Roger Harpel. He wrote enough to be able to run databasic, the programming language that pick used, and made up a set of guis to do the file report generation stuff that was quite different from pick, but ran much better on a pc with two floppies. Ulimate considered buying revelation, and Microdata licensed a version of it to run on the M1000 that was pretty horrible. it still is heavily used and is marketed by revelation technologies today. Roger harpel left the pick programming industry, and I believe emmigrated to Thailand and died there as I have heard. He was not involved in computing when he passed. There are a huge amount of packages that run large chain stores such as auto parts stores, and other such chains that are pick that don't even know they are run by pick systems. Many have absorbed their own derivatives that are not known to be pick based even by their maintainers in some cases. IBM owns the biggest competitor in the unix arena to pick, Universe and unidata. They continue to thrive there. Pick systems was merged with a small has been mac database vendor, omnis and still struggles in the arena. (I have my body armour on). My background is as a system developer for pick vendors and I worked in the pick assembler system code from 1975 to 1990. I don't think a reasonable living can be made in pick these days, as most "IT" approaces to systems software and application programming comoditize the skillsets and do not recognize the innovation that pick epitomized in its heyday. You have to be somr sort of rock star these days at the top of the IT pile, and those doing the real work seem to bee treated like surfs. I have luckily had the connection to this sort of group, and I think that a lot of those here are like me and have a hardware / software sort of skil that is valued still to some extent, and that is what I do now. sorry for the personal comments, just got carried away. jim Bj?rn wrote: