My dad recently retired but his company was still using Pick as of a year or two ago. They also had a one-dude maintenance plan. I wonder if it was the same dude.
My first job out of college was over 2 decades ago, and I was hired to work on a web app which was considered new technology. But an important application there that was used by hundreds of people around the country was written with Pick, and the owner of the company also had some local Houston businesses whose Pick applications he occasionally did maintenance work on. The owner had moved from Chicago to Houston at the beginning of the 80s because he was able to get a high-paying job with no degree, but when the oil bust happened he learned Pick programming from an older guy and did so well when he started his own business that he retired early.
Just the fact that you can use the keyboard is brilliant. I teach high school and most of my computing tasks are in lowest-bidder web GUI messes (lousy UX, no hotkeys) and take so much longer than a keyboard interface would. Even taking roll takes a minute or two longer than it used to.
I teach at a summer camp once that had custom web app for roll such that it displayed one name at a time to call out and to mark it as present you had to type their given name in a box, otherwise click next with empty input for absent
If I was faced with that, I would switch to paper. Somebody can type it in later.
Also I have no mental imagery of summer camp with networking much less internet. I can't comprehend dropping my kids off at a retail storefront or a church as "summer camp".
I remember my high school went big on Gradebusters software--text entry on the Apple IIe (80 column required!) of course that was all keyboard driven.
Tab tab down space down space down down down space.. that was taking attendance.
One problem with GUI is that pointer-warping is unnerving, we don't have facilities like "I clicked, now warp the pointer to the next target" but that's commonplace with text UI.
In Florida, condominium associations (COA) and homeowners associations (HOA) are not legally the same thing, but in discussions like this people often refer to them interchangeably. There is a big difference between an HOA requiring mowed lawns and paint colors and a COA that maintains roofs, pools, playgrounds, common elements, etc. People will refer to Surfside as a reason HOAs are important but the Champlain Towers was a condo.
Your comment will rattle a few cages here but I honestly think about this all the time, as one of the minority of music educators around HN. The blind spots (or perhaps a STEM vs STEAM upbringing) are unfortunate. We are possibly the only — or one of an incredibly small number of — species that even makes sounds solely for enjoyment and aesthetics. The humanities are what make us us.
We're also the only species that can use abstraction to assign meaning to and relations between symbols in any way we choose. The humanities and the sciences are both extremely important to what makes us human, and saying that only one is 'what makes us us' will alienate those who are different from you.
That you are primarily driven by music and aesthetics, and others are primarily driven by science and technological creation, and most of us are driven by both in varying degrees - that is what makes us human.
I'm driven by all four. That's why I'm here! My point is that current culture as a whole allows for a large deficit in individuals' understanding the humanities. Especially around here, you will see comments suggesting that the humanities are not necessary, or are not viable career paths, etc.
It's not that one drive is more important than the other. It is that we as a contemporary society often treat arts that way. Your drive is vital too!
That said, early in my life I took a chance on music and really enjoyed the performing arts. Through an unfortunate set of circumstances, I ended up doing Music education for my peers.
A beloved teacher had a health issue that left them unable to teach and the substitute did not have the same manner and appreciation for the music and after a few conflicts, they called me out and I (foolishly) accepted!
Now I just had to back it up with actions.
Short story, "my" class was a success. Students reached their goals, we placed well in competition and that teacher and I developed a great friendship.
You are dead on with your comment. And having had the chance to take music education, then turn right around and deliver it seriously was at once crazy and ultra enlightening!
I had the realization my chest thumping got me placed into a position where I had an obligation to educate my peers and rid them of that blind spot you wrote of the same as was done for me.
And that was the H in "hard." Running the class, prepping pieces for performance, debugging the choir all were what I thought was hard.
Nope.
Getting them to internalize the humanity of it, language of emotion and all that, is hard. Respect for the art, whatever it may be, is hard. Cultivating the culture of learning, shared vulnerability (in the case of group performing arts) and the intensely personal nature of it all is hard.
I grew half a decade doing that as a high schooler, who had no clue at all what they said yes to...
In the end, a walk through the humanities is both empowering and enlightening on a level many technical people fail to appreciate.
No fault of theirs. They just did not get what I and many others did or gave as the case may be.
I can put a notch sharper point on all this for passersby (assuming you and I talking is preaching to the choir):
The ones who do not take the trip through the humanities are often told what to do by the ones who did.
Thanks for doing the hard work you do. It is often underappreciated.
One of HN's few(?) music appreciation professors here: in fact, I start every term posing this question. It's hard to teach music appreciation before a group of humans can agree where music begins and ends :) At the end of the day, like everything else it's a certain degree of statistics and a certain degree of subjectivity.
