TS-2068, Sinclair QL and Z88
Isn’t that what we all are, “Amateur Programmers”? I believe so. Some could be proffessionals, but to be so would have to junk out their Sinclair – Timex and do their programming with an IBM or Macintosh. Those are the only two computers that offer a wide market for a programmer to make a living. Fortunately, we orphan computer users have always had the services of Amateur programmers working to provide new programs or up-grade modifications of older ones. AND, that is what UPDATE MAGAZINE is all about.
This reminds me of some past experience in managing a fleet of aircraft. Often there would be problems of frequent failure or un-reliability of certain systems. The “school way” of dealing with such problems would be to give an order to the next manager in the command line, “Fix the Problem”. But that approach hardly ever works. The best approach is to call together a group of mechanics who know the system and ask for their participation to solve the problem. The point is “group participation” is a powerful force for almost any endeavor.
Most of us are hesitant to give advice about subjects. But, like the lowly mechanic, we each have ideas that can be useful to others. In fact, I’ve learned more about programming from reading inputs from other “amateur programmers”. Each has his own exclusive innovations. To mention one, Warren Fricke‘s occasional articles in Update inspired me to do more with Math and Plotting. (Warren recently passed away). Warren always preceed his article with a comment, “–if you publish this one I’ll send another”. His articles were short, to the point, and useful.
Then there was Roelof Mulder who gave us an excellent extension of the Oliger DOS. This was the nucleus for Bob Hartung‘s “DOSDEX” series of Disk Utilities (and issue disk). Then there are Bob Mitchell and George Chambers who have produced a whole library of LKDOS utilities and shared them via the Toronto disk library. There are many others who could be mentioned. Some just gave ideas and others complete programs. I’ll wrap up this philosophical set of epistles with a call for everyone to PARTICIPATE. Tell us “your way” of getting the most from your computer. Send your articles, short or long, to Update Magazine. BJ_