Bio: Steve Parker

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This Clarion Bio was originally published on the Icetips News Network

Bio: Steve Parker
7-Nov-2001 -- Susan Pichotta
 
In our second of an ongoing series, the Icetips News Network is pleased to present an interview with Steve Parker. Sometimes a man of few printed words (he can pack more into a word or two than anyone I know! ;), Steve wrote his answers as he speaks, which is to say, with depth, interest, and attitude. Enjoy!
 
Who do you work for?
While I do some consulting work, for the last three years I've worked for ARBA Retail Systems. ARBA is a small outfit, making it ideal for someone who wants to "carry the ball."
 
ARBA is in Downers Grove, Illinois which, as everyone knows, is a suburb of Chicago (isn't everything?) and we market a line of POS solutions. Some of these are ROM based for, as my boss puts it, "real cash registers." We have a few hundred users still on an old
C-Basic version (I had nothing to do with it, I swear!). We have a DOS Clarion product which I am "porting" to Windoze.
 
'"Porting?"'
The folks who did the original C-Basic and, later, CDD apps often showed signs of brilliance. But, just as often, didn't understand the Clarion way of doing things and, so, created some remarkably inefficient code and an occassional major bug. Crucial parts of the code (probably a port from the C-Basic version) are just plain convoluted.
 
I often use the DOS product as a model for the Windows version. If nothing else, I can usually use it to deduce the underlying business needs. Well, I periodically go over to our support staff and ask them whether such-and-such a feature doesn't work as expected. Since they know I'm not fully versed in the DOS code, I get these looks of utter surprise. <G> hmmmmmm.
 
What do you like best about what you do now?
The best part of application development, to me, has always been problem solving. It is my responsibility to figure out how to make something work. Nothing compares with the "eureka" of untying a knot and making something happen. I am constantly able to challenge myself.
 
And, it's more than just the challenge you give yourself. The end result of what I do is that someone else doesn't have to work as hard to accomplish their work. (When I was in management, I used to claim I had important things to do, like drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. I quit smoking but I still figure folks have better things to do with their time than collate reports or count widgets.)
 
The other best part of application development is the instantaneous sense of relief you get when you do solve a particularly difficult or interesting problem. (Yes, it does feel good when you stop!)
 
What has been one of your biggest challenges in using Clarion?
Absolutely without a doubt, the biggest challenge in using Clarion is trying to keep up with my colleagues, other Clarion users.
 
I'm not doing so well at that.
 
What has been one of your biggest challenges in business?
When I worked for larger outfits, the challenge was the politics (but you know what I really meant). I just never managed to come to grips with the fact that my co-workers weren't there to get the job done and serve the customer ("hey, guys, you remember him; the one that pays our salaries!").
 
I suppose I'm just not suited for those kinds of companies; I simply have no "BS tolerance".
 
But, at the end of the day, the challenge is being confident that you earned your pay each day, being able to look at yourself in the mirror.
 
Do you use any computer languages besides Clarion?
I used to but they've atrophied from lack of use.
 
I used to check out a new (to me) product every six months or so, looking for something better than Clarion. After seven or eight years, I just gave up.
 
When did you start using Clarion?
It was 1988, I think, and I had been happily making Condor turn handsprings. I had a student services tracking and a student employment application that I thought were solid vertical market apps. But Condor required licensing.
 
I read a review of this product, $110, that was supposed to turn out real EXEs in just a few minutes.
 
The product was Clarion Personal Developer (a lot of us got into Clarion this way).
 
It took me a few weeks to get with the program but, within three months, Tech Support was claiming I held the unofficial record for the largest Personal app known. I had outgrown Personal with an .APP file pushing 2Mb.
 
So, up to Professional Developer. Three more months and I needed Overlay Manager and RTLink so the app would run (I said it was big).
 
The rest, as they say, is history (or, as I like to mispronounce it, "hysteria").
 
What's the coolest project(s) you've worked on using Clarion?
Whatever project I'm working on.
 
(I'm still a little bit tickled with the download app at PAR2.)
 
Have you done anything for a living other than software development?
"I've been a butcher, a banker, a baker, a pirate, a thief and a king."
 
I have a Ph. D. in Philosophy, so I obviously planned to teach. And, I did: Logic, Ethics, Comparative Religion, Foundations of Education. But a tenure track job was not to be.
 
I worked in a sheltered workshop for two years. A sheltered workshop is where the handicapped can work. My staff (to this day, I refuse to call them "clients") had IQs of 35 - 55. We salvaged electrical meters and the like.
 
After Kathy (the boss) graduated from nursing school, we moved to Chicago. I worked in banking and financial services for about 10 years. I ran a Burroughs mini supporting a piggyback network ("WANs" hadn't been "innovated" yet) and that got me hooked on computers.
 
I was brought into a local community college to run their student job office and to automate student services. I spent 12 years there before joining ARBA to program full time, without doing double duty.
 
What are your hobbies/what do you like to do when you're not using Clarion?
Let's see, five or six years of coaching Little League. Then another four or five chauffeuring Jonathan to his Civil War re-enactments (154th Tennessee Senior Volunteers) and Benjamin to his hockey games (he's a goalie).
 
Zach's pretty much a stay-at-home kid (read "internet addicted"). So when he and I get home, he heads to his chat rooms and I head over to the Clarion newsgroups.
 
Now that Jon and Ben are off at college, I'm enjoying vastly reduced gasoline bills and trying to figure out what to do with all my time <g>.
 
Catching up on my reading?
 
Married, children, grandchildren, other close family you want to mention?
Married 25 years, three children (19 and 14), two cats and a dog. Here's a picture (no four footers):
 
     Jon Zach Kathy      in the Black Hills of South Dakota,
Me Ben                      right behind Mt. Rushmore
 
Where were you born?
I was born in Flatbush (that's in Brooklyn - you've heard of Brooklyn, New York City is a suburb of Brooklyn). But, I'm what used to be called an Army brat ("PC" = "service dependant"); at the ripe old age of five months, my uncle Sam gave me and my mother an all expenses paid trip to Europe.
 
I lived in southern Germany until 1952. Virginia and Michigan followed. We returned to New York half way through second grade. And I stayed in the New York City area until I graduated from college.
 
Grad school in Milwaukee and swinging downtown West Lafayette, Indiana (pronounced "laugh-a-lot") and, now, Chicago since 1978. I'm tired of moving, I guess that's why I'm a stay-at-home (Zach comes by it honestly, I reckon).
 
What's interesting about where you live?
Chicago is awfully interesting. The most valuable property in the city is its lake-front but is, as a matter of city policy, undeveloped. The lakeshore is one long park.
 
Downtown, we have sculptures by Picasso (featured in many TV shows and movies shot here), Miro, Calder (two), Moore and a Chagall mosaic on public display (all but the Moore are owned by the city). And, all of these are in a short walk of each other.
 
But, we don't have the crowding of New York or LA.
 
Have you lived any other interesting places?
I think where I live right now is pretty interesting. Of course, I said the same thing about the last place I lived and the place before that....
 
Which person, from past or present, do you most admire and why?
I have been privileged to know a large number of people worthy of emulation, and not just for one or two qualities.
 
But if I have to pick just one, it would have to be my dad. The levels of honesty, integrity and warmth he displayed, few can match.
 
What is your favorite food?
Like a certain Cajun, who shall go nameless, just about anything placed in front of me <G>.
 
However, I must admit to being partial to anything that tastes good.
 
What is your favorite drink?
You have to ask me that?     Editor's note: COFFEE!
 
What is your favorite type of music?
John Phillip Sousa (I played trumpet in my high school band), Beethoven (odd numbered symphonies) and Mozart. Joe and Eddie. Louis Armstrong, of course, and Count Basie, the Smothers Brothers ....
 
I'm not a big fan of opera.
 
If Clarion never existed, what do you think you would be doing at this time?
I'd probably still be a line manager, making life unpleasant for a bunch of working stiffs.