History

A little history:

After high school, work, traveling Europe and North Africa by car and motorbike, and a few years at college, I had a 10 year stint in the car industry. Once there, I tried everything from grease and tire monkey to advanced car-electronics and workshop manager, completing with relevant education as I went along.

In 1990 I re-booted and came out a RPG  and Synon/2e programmer on the then target platform being the a few years earlier newly introduced IBM AS/400 midrange server. This IBM AS/400 server was re-baptized many time over the years, from AS/400 to iSeries via eServer iSeries by IBM, but goes for the time being under the names of Power or IBMi.

My first assignments within IT were in the Netherlands as a RPG and 2E programmer. At that time I simultaneously completed my education with relevant college classes in database design, structured programming, assembler (…yes!) etc. Later, the suite of tools was extended with the then new Cool:Plex, later CA:Plex, the modern client-server application development tool.

Since 1997 my family and I live in Sweden, my current residence being on the country side 50 clicks straight north of the capital Stockholm, close to the city of Uppsala and international airport Arlanda. Since then, my workplaces, employers and customers have always been in Stockholm and surroundings.

In 1999 I started as consultant doing RPG, 2E and Plex. Plex ended up being shelved but the other two remained and still do today. As my employer since 1999 decided to close the doors in 2010, I started my own business PvD Consultancy AB early 2011.

Somewhere along that line, IBM thought it wise to once again rename the platform, this time to IBM i. Please take notice that I am still working on the same platform but only confused on a higher level on what to call it. Stubborn as I am, I’ll stick to IBM i, completely ignoring the outdated but frequently used terms AS/400 and iSeries. I will however correct you every time you address the server with an obsolete name, but always with a smile!

In between I even managed to get some development done for windows (in Clarion 5) and in the early 2000’s I had a stint with the development of first mobile apps for the PalmOS platform – I still think that PalmOS was great stuff!

As a consultant, I’ve had a number of assignments at a handful of customers and different environments. Most of my assignments having in common a long time relationship between the customer and myself.

Having participated in a phase-out of a large IBMi platform containing a variety of applications that were migrated to an MS Azure based infrastructure, I have considerable expertise in projects of that plumage as well.

Since 2016 I also have an assignment as a RPG, SQL and 2E programmer, as well as Robotics (RPA) developer at Nordea Life & Pension. This started out as part-time but grew between 2017 and 2018 gradually to a full-time assignment. Since 2017, my job there has been split 50-50 in IBMi work and RPA, or Robotics Process Automation.

Out of interest, I try out new stuff as it comes along and looks interesting or cool, or both. A few of the more recent ones are WordPress website design, UiPath RPA and OutSystems mobile apps.
– WordPress I use for the websites I build for myself and others.
– UiPath I see as an alternative to BluePrism for RPA development, both have their pro’s and cons and can be your choice for your project. According to many, RPA will play a big role in the IT development in the near future. So that you don’t have to choose, I intend to do both.
– OutSystems is meant to give mobile app development a go. This as I see a lot of requests for this kind of assignments popping up without being able to contribute today. By the looks of things, OutSystems is going to change that.

Industries worked in:

  • Car industry (dealer level)
  • Car leasing
  • Gas industry
  • Warehouse, distribution & Logistics
  • Marketing industry, bonus and customer loyalty
  • Car industry (importer/distributor level)
  • Musical industry, specializing in copyrights and ownership
  • Stock exchange, the banking customer solution
  • Insurance (pension), head office/back office solution

In 2020 Covid struck and I got a lot of extra time due to working from home rather than the office in Stockholm. I decided to follow up on a long dream to write a book. To date, I have published my first three books as paperback and ebook, and am working on two more.