From a very early age i was fascinated by all things technology related but I was a little early in life for studies in computer science as a mainstream subject.
In 1976 i started working in a local university as a technician while studying chemistry there part time and I got my first insight into computing on a Harris Mainframe and Fortran 4 fed via punch cards.
In 1979 we had a Commodore PET on trial in the lab and that’s when my appetite was truly “whetted” for programming.
Soon after (1980) I purchased my first personal computer, a Tandy TRS80 and very quickly got heavily into Z80 machine code programming as Basic simply wasn’t fast enough for what i wanted to do in game development.
I changed career direction and joined the Police Service in 1980 as a serving officer (don’t ask me why, i still havn’t worked that one out)
Very quickly I found myself putting my computer skills into action and in 1984 developed the first Computer based crime analysis system in the UK.
By 1987 I was seconded to work for central training with a brief to develop Computer Based Training systems to install into regional training centres.
When I look back at the pre-HTML/ Authorware/ Flash/ Shockwave days this as a big ask but i was able to develop some pretty useful stuff via the DBase compiler Clipper and a Novell Network with 18 diskless terminals per centre. Pretty cutting edge for it’s time.
3 years, a computer degree (studied part time) and a promotion later I returned to operational work and in 1991 I registered my first computer company called Logical Access Ltd.
Running two jobs with a wife and family was pretty full on but my passion for writing software drove me on and after a chance meeting with a Doctor found myself moving into the world of Doctor’s Practice management systems, everything from patient records to appointment systems. A really exciting time in my life but the introduction of endless red tape by the government made this route an increasingly difficult take and finally i was squeezed out by the big corporates.
A few quiet years followed, a few faithful customers running their businesses on my customer software before,in 1998, I was drafted back to the Computer Based Crime analysis arena building analysis routines for data dumps from the organisations mainframe using Microsoft Visual Foxpro and interfacing to a mapping system to highlight patterns such as time, location and highlighting “crime hot spots”.
Another promotion followed and I was then drafted back into training to “redevelop” Computer Based Training, this time primarily using Authorware and Flash with a small team of designers to assist. Ironically my organisation was Lotus Notes based and I was prohibited from putting web servers online and using HTML based training, so frustrating as Macromedia (now adobe) Courseware would have been perfect.
Then a big blow followed, budget cuts struck then organisation decided to drop its CBT project and I was moved to Personnel Dept to develop some local databases to manage the deployment of their 6,000 employees.
Finally retirement arrived (UK Police officers could retire after 30 years then) and at 51 I was able to concentrate on software fill time. I re-registered a company working with my youngest son who is a hardware/Windows technician. Sadly he chose the new company name which between ourselves I hate, Hyperbytes.
In reality virtually all my work now is web based, i don’t have a huge customer base but those I have are loyal and keep me busy. I am a bit too much of a control freak to take on staff, i would spend all my time checking their code!
Dreamweaver was my product of choice with some DMX Zone extensions although to be honest I was comfortable coding most things by hand so didn’t use huge amounts of them.
Recently I was approached by a group of people who were looking to launch a new company within the financial sector who were sounding me out to come on board as Director of I.T. (and shareholder) and develop the IT side of the business, an offer too good to decline.
While well within my skill set, time scales were longer than i was comfortable with and just then i found Wappler.
I initially thought it would be useful to develop the more mundane parts of the site so i could more time on the more complex aspects but as I learn more and more about Wappler I now see that there is very little i would need to do outside the Wappler environment and in many cases it does it better and faster than I could manually.
I am not and have never been a good designer, i am basically a database developer. Wappler adds a very important and much needed aspect to my work; I can make it look good easily! As a product it has changed my perception of visual app builders which i used to avoid as i don’t like to compromise. The ability to edit the standard HTML code produced externally was a significant factor in my decision to use Wappler but ironically has not proved a particularly necessary feature.
I am proud and humbled at being chosen to be a Wappler Ambassador and hope to give back to Wappler users as much as Wappler has brought to me.
They chose the perfect word to describe Wappler, it truly is Awesome.
Brian English @Hyperbytes
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