This is the blog of Wim ten Brink, a software engineer with over 30 years of programming experiences. And more recently, also a modest CGI artist.

My first program was for some Texas Instruments calculator, which I used to calculate the quadratic formula in an easier way. (And it helped me to cheat with math!) I then started with the ZX-81 and its BASIC dialect, and the Sinclair Quantum Leap which had kind og QuickBasic-like dialect. I also had a Pascal compiler for that machine because my school started to provide ICT lessons and some class about programming with Pascal. Soon I also learned to program in COBOL, C, Assembly and several other languages and thanks to a short learning job at IBM Nederland I also learned the basics of SQL. This all before 1990…

In 1988 I also owned my first real IBM-compatible computer and while I had GWBasic and a COBOL compiler for this machine, I quickly started with Turbo Pascal instead. In the years afterwards, I went from illegal copies of Turbo Pascal 3 and 6 to a legally purchased copy of Turbo Pascal 6. Started doing Windows development in Turbo Pascal for Windows 1.5 and shortly afterwards in Borland Pascal 7. When Delphi 1 arrived on the market I was mainly working for a small company that created cashier software for (movie) theatres. This was mostly in Microsoft Basic Professional Development System version 7, although I’ve tried my boss to upgrade to Windows. Unfortunately, after he first tried Gupta SQL-Windows, he decided to use PowerBuilder instead and a colleague of mine started on a new project while I decided I was better off with a new job.

I’ve upgraded from Delphi 1, to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and finally 7. When .NET arrived on the marker, I upgraded to Delphi 8, which was .NET only, before upgrading to RAD Studio 2005, then 2007, Delphi XE and now Rad Studio XE5. But I also started learning about .NET with VB 1.0 and C# 1.0 before upgrading to Visual Studio 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 and now Visual Studio 2015.

At this moment I do a lot of work with XML-based techniques, Classic ASP, ASP.NET, C, C# and Delphi while I also play around with electronics and funnily enough creating CGI artwork with Poser Pro and Vue. I am even creating 3D models to be 3D printed. This might sound a bit weird for a software engineer but working with electronics, creating a CGI image and designing 3D models is very similar to designing software. You start to think about a design, set up the main details and add the important components and then you start to fine-tune everything until you get a fine result.

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