Ask HN: Update My Dad

[bhollan]

So my dad got a computer engineering degree back in the punch card days and ran his own business as a "computer consultant" since the early 90s up until he went to prison for 14 years starting in 2007 and gets out next March (his crime was not computer-related). He mainly used MS Access to develop on-prem apps for small businesses. What [printed] materials can I send to him to update him to modern times before he gets out? I'm sure he can catch up after release, but he's obviously got a lot more time on his hands now, but no computing access.

Also, any ex-con-in-tech related advice is welcome.

[julesallen]

Access is still around, still hanging on by one finger in some orgs (search your favorite news aggregator for whimsical stories). So there may be an opportunity for somebody with decent knowledge of the Access pitfalls to offer a service getting clients into modern times.

Is he allowed books (defining your scope of 'printed')? They'd be so much better than printing a web site.

Becoming a Google Apps consultant might be a good route and get him going quickly. Knowing how to take a company's workflow into Docs, Sheets, etc., is as much methodology as it is tech and code. If he's got good people skills, can see flow at a higher level, this requires very little to get started. The docs are pretty decent but I don't know how many pages this will take to print https://developers.google.com/apps-script/overview

For something more technical, perhaps take a look at the django project's docs. https://www.djangoproject.com/start/

It's going to take some work to get things set up and there's a lot of stuff that's going to be scary new.

But with minimal tweaking it offers a really decent admin interface that's relatively easy to customize and apply input rules, just like an Access database.

Python is relatively easy for BASIC programmers to pick up and loops, decision logic, that kind of thing is directly translatable with very little learning.

I got started professionally with dBase back in the dark ages, jumping from amateur BASIC on a Commodore PET. If he's inquisitive, hungry, determined, and willing to put in the hours there's a journey to getting current again.

Good luck to your dad and I hope you get some useful advice from this thread.

[bhollan]

I like the "Rescue us from Access" angle. That has good promise. He's never written a line of JavaScript in his life, so I doubt he'll want to do App Scripts, but that's another good one. Thanks.

[blacksqr]

A COBOL textbook.

[bhollan]

He probably knew COBOL at one point. He used to write in FoxPro for the longest time. He had an old CompuServe email before we got Juno. My first email was tagged on with his Juno account in the late 90s.

[julesallen]

How very droll. Most of your COBOL gigs are with insurance companies, local.gov, and banks. OP's dad is going to have a hard time even getting an interview with outfits like that.