Page 103 - A Life - my Live - my path

9. Graduated from ULB

1985, everything changes!

9.1 IT Director – the springboard
In 1985, as a graduate in Business Informatics and Human
Sciences, when I submitted my new diploma to the IRE
personnel department, word spread quickly, and everyone
was surprised.
At that time, the cyclotron computerization project was
nearing completion and my actions had been recognized as
justified. However, I was still in charge of the computers for
scientific calculations. The hardware came from the
excellent firm Digital Equipment, which was later bought by
Compaq, which in turn was bought by Hewlett Packard - HP.
Management computing was supported by IBM S34 and
IBM S38 hardware. The IRE financial manager , also the
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managing director's right-hand man, was in charge of IT
management. He sensed that his team, as it was structured,
was not up to the new challenges on the horizon. This team
consisted of a manager who carried out analyses and
programming, assisted by two other programmers. The
programs were written in RPG-3, a typical IBM
programming language classified as 3rd generation .
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88 Claude SMITH
89 Programming languages have always been classified into 'generations'. The
1st generation was 'machine language', the 2nd generation was 'assembler'
and the 3rd was 'procedural' (Cobol, Fortran, Basic, RPG). They had to be
translated by a compiler or an interpreter.
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