ADDS Mentor 2000 - Big success!

[Brent Hilpert]

Over a period of a year or two circa 1977/8 I did some occasional programming on
a Microdata Reality system.
I was a teenager and it was the second computer I programmed on (and the
first programming I was paid for). It was applications stuff (payroll/accounting)
and I knew next to nothing about the underlying system, I didn't even know that
there was something called Pick involved!

So I'm finding it quite interesting hearing about Pick and the mentions of
Microdata. I've rarely heard Microdata mentioned over the years.

I remember the English database query language.
As I recall, one could do a complex sort/select on a database with a single English
'sentence', something like:
   SELECT EMPLOYEES WITH PAYRATE>8.50 AND HIRED AFTER 1/6/76 SORT BY NAME
(don't hold me to the syntax, it's been 28 years)
and the resultant dataset would be held for further processing by a
subsequently executed BASIC program.
As a teenager I knew nothing about it's status in the realm of things, but
I've since gathered that it was impressive for it's time (or ahead of it's time).

I'm looking over some listings of BASIC programs I wrote (Microdata DATA/BASIC V2.4)
(printed on greenbar paper of course) as I write this.
The version of BASIC it had seemed pretty good (for BASIC), or perhaps it's the
recollection of the improvement of going to a 24-line CRT display after my first
experience programming on the single-line 32-char display of an HP 9830.