From Warehouse to Code
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The years passed, and after finishing my education, I found myself needing to earn a living. My interest in the English language had led me to take an intermediate-level state exam, and I soon landed a job with a company that was the main distributor of Oxford University Press’s English Language Teaching (ELT) books. I started working in the warehouse, and it wasn’t long before I was promoted to warehouse manager. Computers were already a key part of the workflow, handling stock and invoicing.
With my first steady paycheck, I was able to buy a used 286 IBM-compatible PC, running MS-DOS. This opened up a new world for me. In the warehouse, we were using a DOS-based invoicing and stock management system, and it just so happened that the company behind this software was located across the street. The system was plagued with bugs, database corruption, and frequent failures, and we saw their operators running over every day to fix things.
Curious, I struck up conversations with them about how the software worked and what technologies they used. With my programming background still rooted in the ZX Spectrum days, I knew it was time to learn something new. I dove into books on Clipper and DBase, the tools used by the company to build the software.
As the business grew, the issues with the software intensified, especially when the application was used across the network. Race conditions and database problems became a constant headache. I noticed these issues before the company did, and I decided to take matters into my own hands. In my spare time, I set about creating a more robust and user-friendly version of the software. After months of hard work, I presented my version to the CEO, and they agreed to give it a try. The company bought the software from me, and it quickly became a much more reliable solution for managing stock.
One of our distributors also took an interest in the software, and I made a deal with them as well. Fast forward to 2024, when I ran into that distributor again. To my surprise, in a small division of their company, they were still using the very software I had written, running in a DOS-box application. It was a humbling moment, realizing that something I had created so many years ago still had lasting value.
