iknow uk

About the time I learnt ColdFusion, I helped set up the data aspect of iknow-UK Ltd. Just prior to this, I helped the iknow guys create a prototype site using CF. It soon became apparant that ColdFusion running as a script in a browser window was not going to be scalable enough. So we decided to buy our own server, an X-Serve, which didn’t support CF. But that didn’t matter because I was already learning PHP to use as a command-line script to build all those pages (about 25,000 to start with every night). From there I haven’t looked back although I still do miss CF a little.

ColdFusion

By now I had a dedicated server that happened to come with ColdFusion server. So I got curious.I quickly understood how writing templates could be done quite easily in ColdFusion and, after learning CFSCRIPT, I was away writing CF websites and loving it. Whereas ASP required ASP code within the HTML, CF had abbreviated HTML tags that were so much better to use. Not too disimilar to the Smarty template system that I use now. More on that later.

Given an opportunity, I would love to go back to ColdFusion.

ASP 3.0

The transition from VB6 to ASP 3 was near to seamless. I didn’t realize just how similar the structure was until I was asked to help out someone with a ASP problem.I troubleshot (is that the correct past tense?) a website for a client that was written in ASP which ultimately landed me a job with him as a ASP developer. Those were the days when websites had so few visitors, it didn’t matter that you used an Access Database File as your DB on your website. How things have changed!

Visual Basic 6

My first commercial progs were written with Visual Basic 6. I say commercial, when in fact, I wrote them to help me in my salaried job.We had a UNIX server that managed the sales and customers which was a real pain when we wanted to enhance things. Normally, from a PC, you simply export the data into csv format and import into Excel (or, nowadays, Pages). But from a UNIX box, not so straight forward. So I got the UNIX guy to write an export script that created my “csv” data, which was then copied onto a floppy and loaded onto my PC.

Then, using the magic of VB6, I wrote a program that determined how overdue each customer was and formatted a letter accordingly to be printed and sent out - all with the click of 1 button. It was horrible code (literally all in the button_click function) but I was self-taught.

AMOS Basic

Ah I remember this. Any Amiga fans out there? This was an app I bought and never regretted.It cost about £50 back in circa 1990, which was a lot (although some games were £30) and it introduced me to the world of developing. AMOS Basic was awesome because, although it could be used for writing BOBs and SPRITEs, I used it for writing utility programs such as stock ordering and it was brill.

Anybody out there still program in AMOS??