Roy Sharp - Technical
The information below is for the technically-minded and is intended as a guide to technology used and level of expertise. Most recent experience is first.
Delphi (currently XE version) is used for all windows-based development. This is still a serious tool in the development world now allowing applications to be developed for multiple operating systems from a single code-base. Have a look at Embarcadero’s Application Showcase. You will see familiar products like Skype, WinRar, SpyBot, MySQL administrator, Help & Manual, HeidiSQL, WinSCP are all written using RadStudio.
PHP, HTML, and javascript have been used at a basic level sometimes in combination with Delphi to allow secure remote access to company data, or on their own on this site for example. Skill level is more debugging and fixing rather than writing from scratch although, with the aid (again) of Embarcadero, new code has been written for one project.
MySQL, Sybase, Interbase, Firebird and other SQL databases have been used in many projects, and database design plus SQL coding are both in constant use. Reverse-engineering of database schema has been part of a number of projects including CareManager3 and RIMS (a back-office banking system).
Flat-file databases were all that were available in the early years but as recently as 2013 there was a requirement to extract data from a 20+ year old Dec Alpha system and convert it into a MySQL database with a windows program to access it.
VMWare and Citrix Xen are used constantly for development databases, virtualising old PCs, testing new software and operating systems, and any other use we can think of!
Unix shell script was extensively used on one project but was always supported by the manual.
Microsoft products such as Office, Project, Visio, etc. are in constant use often linking to MySQL databases to produce analyses and reports. Some coding expertise in these products.
Dec Alpha DCL command language was extensively used while working on DEC Alphas
Unix systems were configured and used in banking projects.
Wireshark, BitKinex, FTP and other technical tools are in constant use to aid with development and support.
Business Objects was needed for one project although it was mis-applied which made it challenging.
The last century - from the start, generally in chronological order!
- ICL System 4/50, programming in Cobol, able to read binary coded punch cards and HexaDecimal dumps - There are some photos on Flickr by a guy called Roy Pedlar
- PDP 11/44. RSTS/E, CTS300, CTS500 . Basic, Dibol.
- Tandy TRS 80, Commodore Pet, CP/M, MSDOS. Basic
- VAX, VMS, Basic+, DCL, DECNET
- Datatrieve
- Windows!!!
- VTerm, Reflections
- Lotus
- Sage, Quattro, Pegasus, WordPerfect
- Paradox, PAL
- MS and Lotus office programs
- UNIX (SUN workstations)
- Project Manager Workbench
- DEC Alpha systems, DDS-X (Unix Trading system)
- Microsoft Project, Mind Genius
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