One of the perks of my new job was that I was allowed to use items from the store for educational purposes.  One morning, while taking inventory in the store, I came across an IBM DOS COBOL compiler.  I borrowed the copy and used it to practice my programming skills by using the COBOL compiler to write programs at home.  This was an unwieldy process.  The computer that I borrowed only had one 5 ¼ inch floppy drive and 256K of random access memory (RAM).   In comparison, the computer I am using today has 2.24 GB of RAM and a 931 GB hard drive. That meant that I needed to constantly swap disks in and out of the drive to complete the task.  This took a long time.  By today’s standards I was basically playing with a toy.  Regardless, the tool served its purpose and I was able to continue COBOL programming.

In addition, I was also able to keep my COBOL programming skills up-to-date by assisting my girlfriend with her college programming assignments.  She was so impressed with my programming prowess that she would later agree to marry me (and I thought it was my good looks).

Within a year I was promoted to store manager.   This turned out to be nothing but a headache job.  Time that I had previously spent learning about PC’s was now spent taking inventory, handling customer complaints, and meeting with upper management.  I became frustrated and was considering abandoning my quest for a job as a computer programmer In favor of large appliance salesman or military service. 

One day I ran into one of the lady’s I used to work with on the Strawbridge's selling floor.  I spoke of my frustrations on my job hunt.  She pulled out an old medal of Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, placed the medal in my hand, and then said a prayer.  Afterwards she gave me the medal.  (It was like I was back in Catholic grade school listening to one of the Sisters of Mercy).  In return I had to give her 50 cents.  (Did I just get duped out of my lunch money?)  Little did I know, my time in computer retail would be shortly coming to an end.

In March of 1985 I received a surprise phone call.  It was from the manager of the School District of Philadelphia’s (SDP) Data Processing department calling to schedule me for a job interview. I had forgotten that I had taken a test for this job earlier in the previous year and that I had placed eighth on the list.  Since I didn’t get called by the city when I was third on their list I was certain that gaining employment with the School District was a “lost cause”.

On April 8^th, 1985, I began my career at the Philadelphia School District as a programmer I. My yearly starting salary was $22,000. I thought I was rich. Ironically, the young lady who worked in my old department at Strawbridges would become my closest friend.

I spent the majority of my first year maintaining and developing batch COBOL programs.Ironically, I was required to submit my first few programming assignments on coding paper so it could be keyed on punched cards. Shortly thereafter, I was permitted to use a dumb terminal to complete future programming tasks.

In my early years of programming my assignments consisted primarily of batch COBOL programs that were run on a DOS/VSE operating system.  Batch programs are submitted via job control language (JCL) to the mainframe computer.   The JCL was keyed on a series of punched cards (here we go again with the cards).  A yellow card was filled out containing the name of the job as well as required inputs and outputs (I/O’s).  I/O’s were usually magnetic tapes.  A tape librarian would pull the tape from the tape library and place it in a bin under the programmer’s name.  Most batch jobs were run at night.

After my first year I was promoted to the position of Programmer II.  For this, I received a pay raise and a new work assignment.  I was assigned to the Payroll team.   This meant that I would be working with a small group of programmers and systems analyst that worked exclusively on human resources and payroll applications.  During my tenure on payroll I would be modifing programs that produced W-2s, changed tax rates and pay check enhancements. 

Working on payroll was a high pressured job.  There was very little room for error.  A large premium was placed on program debugging and testing.  The program applications on the payroll side were amongst the largest in the department. Thus, compiles could be rather lengthy.  Sometimes it would take up to 45 minutes to compile a program.  Mistakes were made;it often took several compiles before a program would compile correctly. 

A compiler takes computer source code, that is the code that the programmer writes in a language such as COBOL, and produces object code.  Object code is the code that the computers processor understands.  It is basically a series bits and bytes.  A bit is a basic unit of information and can have only one of two values, 0 or 1.  A group of 8 bits is commonly called one byte.

Not only did some of the large payroll programs take long to compile they could also take equally as long to run.  Therefore, efficient programming and testing were of great importance. 

The only person to fear missing periods more than an unmarried woman is a computer programmer.  Omitting a period may not affect the ability for a program to compile successfully but it could certainly affect the logic of the program.  This could cause unpredictable results that are extremely difficult to debug. 

There are two types of errors that can affect a computer program: syntax and logic errors.  Syntax errors are misspellings or opening brackets without closing them.  These types of errors occur at compile time.  Logic errors are errors that occur during run time.  One common type of runtime error is a data exception (SOC7 in MVS).  This happens when the program tries to move nonnumeric data to a packed-decimal field.   Today, this type of error would be easy to debug because of abend-aid tools.  Back in the 80’s, solving this problem was a daunting task. 

Because compiles took so long, payroll programmers did not have the luxury of re-submitting the job and placing displays throughout the code to see where the program went awry.  To assuage compile time, programmers needed to read the core dump provided by the abending program to determine what line the program aborted on.  By examining the hexadecimal value of the variable that caused the abend the problem could be resolved.

A core dump is a display of the computer’s memory at a point in time, generally when the program has crashed.  The core dump is displayed on a console or printout and is arranged in hexadecimal columns.  Although quite long, I always printed my dumps so that I could have a hard copy to write notes and perform calculations while debugging. 

Hexadecimal is a numerical system of base 16.  The first 10 numbers are represented by 0 – 9.  Numbers 10 through 15 correspond to characters A, B, C, D, E, and F.

In the spring of 1989 I was promoted to the position of programmer analyst (PA).  During this time I was given the assignment of developing the Philadelphia School District’s first online time and attendance system (PARIS).  This application was written in COBOL/XE.  This is a form of COBOL that allows you to write online applications without using command-level CICS (a highly complicated interface).  Programming in COBOL/XE offered developers the ability to produce online mainframe applications in a timely manner.

The main advantage of coding in the online environment was that you could run tests instantaneously.  No more over night test runs.  Also, developing the panels was kind of fun.  To a small degree you had some flexibility on creativity.  Panels could be developed with color as well as blinking text. 

Programming this application was extremely complicated because there were many exceptions.  Because of this complexity I felt that many of the programs that I had written were difficult to understand.  This could make future enhancements more challenging.  However, despite my concerns this application served the District well and ran without failure for over 10 years.  It was finally retired prior to the year 2000. 

The Y2K conversion presented a major problem for the entire computer industry.  Although many have deemed it to be “the hoax of the century”, it was a massive undertaking for those of us faced with preventing a potential catastrophe.  

The problem was that most computer applications abbreviated the 4 character year to 2 characters.  This was done to save space at a time when computer storage was a premium.  Without modifications many computer programs would produce invalid results.  For, example the algorithm for determining a leap year would fail without adjustments.  Further, if a program function is calculating difference between two dates, it would calculate a negative number. For instance the difference between 1 Jan 2000 and 31 Dec 1999 could be calculated as -100 years rather than 1 day.

The solution was to expand the length of the year field from 2 to 4 characters to include the century in programs, files, and databases.  This effort required countless hours of testing and conversions.  When the date finally changed to January 1, 2000 very little actually happened.  Was this the result of too much hype or was it the product of diligent programming efforts?  You be the judge.

As far as I was concerned I would be happy writing mainframe COBOL programs for the next 20 years. However, when I accepted a job interview with Temple University, I realized that technology was evolving and that my skills were stagnating.  At the conclusion of my interview I recognized that the market for mainframe computers was shrinking.  A new era of client/server technology was emerging. 

In this type of system the client consists of PC’s, Macintoshes, or workstations of the system.  The server is a computer that stores the files and databases of the system and provides services to the clients.  Each server requires a database management system (DBMS) to store and manage the data.  The application software does the work that the users want to do and communicates with the DBMS via structured query language (SQL).  The network consists of the cabling, communication lines that connect the clients and servers of the system.

In an effort to expand my horizons I pursued a new position - Network Administrator.  In 2001 I became the administrator of the Avantis Work Order system.  This was a third party application that was used by the Facilities department of the SDP to manage buildings, vehicles, equipment, and personnel.  This position offered me an opportunity to increase my skills.  I would gain experience in the Oracle DBMS, Unix/OS, Crystal Reports, and PL/SQL.

The purpose of the new position was to replace the vendor that the SDP had hired to implement the Avantis software. The vendor’s fees were extremely high and the District was looking to save money.  Many were unhappy with the condescending attitude of the vendor as well.  I got a taste of this first hand when I attended some of the training sessions that was provided by the vendor.  To my disappointment, the training sessions were glorified demos.  This was going to be a hostile takeover. 

To demonstrate our resolve and to emphasize to the vendor that his was our system and we would be running it, our Data Base Administrator (DBA) decided to prove a point.  He called me, a co-worker, and a member of the vending company to the server room (click here to see the server room) and instructed me to shut down the database.  This was done during the busiest time of the work day.  I’ll never forget the jaw dropping expression on the vendor’s face as we performed this task.  I don’t know if he was more surprised at what we did or that we were able to do it.  There was a chance that this could back fire since we had never practiced running the scripts that we needed to execute to do this job.  I was extremely nervous as I tentatively executed these commands with what seemed to be the whole world looking over my shoulder.  Little did any of us know was that our DBA had already received approval from upper management to shut the system down.

I received a strange feeling one morning when I walked down the hall to the consultants’ office to attend a scheduled meeting.  I thought it peculiar that all of the lights in the office were out.  When I opened the door I faced a completely empty office.  Over night the vendor had packed up and left.  Can anyone say - Bob Irsay?

My new job was challenging.  Since the vendor was no longer available to help provide a smooth transition, our department contracted for a network consultant to assist with the changeover. Since I had no prior experience administering a network, I spent my entire day shadowing the consultant to learn about the network. 

My new duties included: managing user accounts, database backups, software upgrades, and troubleshooting.  Often times when a problem arose that was beyond my capabilities I would call the software company for technical support.  The support line was extremely helpful.  Many times they would take control of my PC remotely to solve a problem.  I would take written notes and store them in a binder to use as a reference for future problems.  When I called for support I would be transferred to either a Russian, Indian, or British technician.  Ironically, of the three I found the British gentlemen the most difficult to understand.  All were extremely knowledgeable and very professional. 

One hot summer day I went to the server room to complete some routine maintenance.   When I opened the secured door, I encountered intense heat rising from the room.  I thought the room was on fire.  It turned out that the cooling system had failed and there was a danger of the servers overheating.   This would be a costly disaster.  To cool the room we had to run several fans and leave the outside door open. 

Having access to a private room had its advantages.  If you were able to block the noise generated from the hum of the server fans, the room could be a nice quiet place to work.  It also came in handy one morning when I inadvertently took Tylenol P.M. to combat a cold and found myself falling asleep at my desk.  I was able to dose off in the privacy of the server room until the medication wore off.

With networking improvements and newer equipment, the time I spent performing maintenance had significantly decreased.  This allowed more time for programming.  Since the Y2K conversion, the department was phasing out mainframe applications.  New applications would now be deployed on the Web. 

In the winter of 2005, despite little formal training in web programming, I was thrown to the "wolves" and assigned to a team of developers to build a new web application for the Early Childhood Department (EC).

Web applications are a type of client/server system.  In our department, web applications are developed in the Java programming language. Java is a high-level, object-orientd internet programming language. This language was produced by Sun Microsystems in 1996.  The advantage of using Java is that it can be used to create programs that run on a myriad of operating systems (Windows, Solaris, Linux, and Macintosh).  Java can also be run on any computer platform. 

Java can be difficult to learn, especially without formal training.  Keeping up with industry changes meant that I would have to learn Java on my own.  To accomplish this I purchased many books to study from.  I also analyzed code that was written by my colleagues who had learned Java in college and had working experience with the new language.  It was a very painful process but with hard work I became a competent Java programmer.

The difficulty of web programming is the hodgepodge of languages used to develop an application. Web pages are mainly composed of three different languages: Hypertext markup Language (HTML), Cascade Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript. HTML makes up the content of the page, providing the structure of the page. Style Sheets enrich the presentation of the page, governing the color, borders and background as well as other properties. JavaScript controls the behavior of the page. This layer enables a page to be interactive by accepting user input and manipulating keyed data. It is very useful in data validation.

To display data from a database server on an internet browser screen requires a program coded in Java to read a database table with SQL scripts. The data is then displayed on the screen through a Java Server Pages(JSP). These pages are difficult to code as well as read.

Java Server Pages consists of Java code embedded within HTML code. The Java code can be in the form of JSP or JSTL tags. Unlike COBOL, there is little structure to a JSP page. Javascript can appear anywhere in the code and JSP or JSTL tags are embedded in the HTML.

Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) was developed in the 1970’s to present document content on the Internet.  However, HTML has no way to interact with a user when it is displaying itself in a browser; enter Javascript (JS).  This is a dynamic computer programming language allowing client-side scripts to interact with the user.   It is run on a client machine, facilitating client-side processing which allows the server to be freed up to attend other client requests.  Thus, data can be validated on the client machine before it is sent to the server.

All of the various computer languages and scripts work together like a symphony, to display a page on the web browser.  Just right click on your mouse button on any internet page and select “view source” for an example.   Consider that this does not show the code that is generated behind the scene to access the servers.  No wonder I come home with a headache on many nights.

We were assigned to develop several applications for the Early Childhood department (EC).  The purpose of one application was to create a system to collect grades for EC students and produce progress reports on a trimester basis.  Another was to create an online interview form that teachers could use to record information obtained from interviewing parents on their child’s early childhood background. 

Assignments were emailed to me by a lead programmer.  I was quickly reminded of my earlier days at Temple when I was thoroughly confused.  By requesting examples and using trial and error I was able to complete my assignments, I continued to build on my prior knowledge and by the beginning of the fall we had an application that was complete.  I was able to improve my skills by enhancing and maintaining the new web applications.

To augment my web programming skills, I enrolled in an online programming course in JSP.  This proved to be money well spent.  By 2008, several of the members of our programming team left the SDP leaving me solely responsible for all of the EC web applications.  As I gained more experience my web programming responsibilities, increased.

In the fall of 2012 I was given the most difficult assignment in my career as an IT professional – the Principal Information Board.  This was an online bulletin board that was used by administrators to post messages to principals and vice-principals.  In addition, file attachments could also be downloaded.  Although this was an existing application, the levels of changes requested were extremely complex.  There were also many pre-existing bugs that needed to be corrected.  Combine this with the fact that the system was originally programmed by an outside consultant who was no longer available. 

There are many ways to code an online application. The techniques used by the consultant were incomprehensible to me.  When I presented this predicament in a programming meeting, my colleagues were all in agreement; the application should be completely re-written.

I spent months working on this assignment.  Many days I started work early and continued through my lunch hour.  At home I prepared notes so that I was able to begin coding as soon as I arrived at my desk the next day (I thought union workers weren’t supposed do this). 

For the first time in my career I considered requesting to be removed from a project.  I actually typed an email stating that I did not feel that my current skills were suited for the task at hand.  Instead of submitting the email I held it.  After a few days, I made some small progress.  As time passed, my progress increased.  Finally I could see a light at the end of the tunnel.  Little did I know that the light I saw was from an oncoming train. 

As I neared completion of the project, management decided that they wanted to make the application flexible enough so that additional departments could access it independently of others.  This meant that a whole new database would need to be created as well as new security and validation.  This change compounded to what was already an extremely complicated project.  The new changes added significantly to the time line.

In March of 2013,the Principal Information Board became - The Information Board.  Welcome all! With the successful completion of this project I gained the respect of my programming peers and management.  This would yield future assignments.  I was now unofficially a web programmer.

Through the years I have witnessed and participated in the evolution of the computer industry.  From the early days of typing code into a punched card to the innovation of the internet, I can’t help but think what lies next.  For me, perhaps - retirement!

I had been looking forward to my retirement day for quite some time. Now that it has I arrived I have been overcome with a feeling of melancholy. The week before I retired, I realized how much I would miss my friends and co-workers. I had known some of them for thirty-four years. I had a feeling that there would be a going away party for me. I was certain that it would be on Friday. I was truly taken for surprise when I was summoned for ten O'clock meeting on Thursday morning. I knew this was a ruse. I barely heard the kind words that were spoken on my behalf by our department's managers because thoughts raced through my mind on what I should say. Then it hit me. I would solute my co-workers by thanking them and addressing those I knew the longest in front of the entire group. Below is my final address to my co-workers and friends:

Well it looks like I made it. Thirty-four years ago, I came here as a young programmer with a full head of hair - It was brown.

Today isn't about me. It's really about all of you. If it wasn't for your help and friendship over the years I would not have made it. Therefore, I would like to thank each of you and personally thank the people I have known the longest.

LAVERNE : Thirty-four years ago we walked in together and met the programming manager Mark Roder. Do you remember what he said to us? I don't so I guess you have a better memory than me. Please know that I will be thinking of you on April 8th in the years that follow.

MICHAEL : You were always there for me. You attended both my mom and dad's funeral and you were present on my wedding day.

VINCE : You were a big help to me during the difficult time I went through with my father. Some mornings you would just ask how's dad? It really helped me.

MELANIE : I was there on your first day. I remember when you brought your daughter Macy in for the first time. I have never seen a prouder mom. Thank you for being so nice to my daughter.

DANNY : You were the first friend I made when I started here. I'll think of you every time I see a can of mountain dew or enjoy a cold Miller beer.

RICH : I appreciated our many discussions over the years. You know more about football than any person I know except for one - me! But you cream me in everything else.

SAM : I've appreciated your help over the years. Like the time you helped fix my electrical outlet or upgrading our Phillies seats. Most important, your financial advice helped me to realize that I could retire today.

HOLLY : I enjoyed our friendship and many conversations over the years. My crystal ball tells me that you will be standing here shortly.

ANNE : If patience is a virtue you are the most virtuous person there is. I don't know how many times I have messed up the sign-in sheet confusing Bill Pascal and Rich Paschall for myself. Not to mention the wrong dates on the vacation cards. You always fixed my mistakes with a smile.

ANGELA : One of the smartest things I did was follow you here 34 years ago. You are the kindest and most thoughtful person I ever met. The world needs more people like you.

I leave you now as an old programmer. However, do you know what the best thing about being an old programmer is? Old programmers never die, they just fade away. Now I'm going to fade away!