Articles by DerekT-P (Tip/Tricks: 2)

First introduced to computing in 1969 while at school. Learned Elliot 903 machine code, punched cards by hand and sent off to a university for processing. Punching and syntax errors came back about a fortnight later. Subsequently the school got a teletype and access to a BASIC system. Really got the bug then and taught myself COBOL and wrote a COBOL interpreter using BASIC.
At Swansea Uni learnt FORTRAN and spent two summers using that to customise train simulation software at BR's Railway Technical Centre.
After graduating, spent 3 years with London Transport, working up from Trainee Programmer to Senior Programmer, using COBOL on both ICL and IBM mainframes, together with CICS.
Later went on to work for companies such as Unilever Computer Services (later became EDS), Cullinet Software (as International Programming Consultant), Synapse Computer Services (Applications Consultant), Prudential Insurance (Design Centre Manager), Dun+Bradstreet International (Business Systems Support Group Manager).
In 1995 I went freelance and formed Small Office Solutions. Initially also providing hardware support to small businesses, I also took on longer-term contracts using VisualBasic with Sainsbury, Tesco, BHs, Mothercare and many others. Later moved into providing full life-cycle consultancy and development to SMEs globally, working remotely most of the time. Applications have ranged from educational, personal finance, logistics, blogging platforms and many more.
Now partially retired and sharing some of my portfolio of code online via CodeProject.com