After completing a 3-year apprenticeship as a laboratory assistant at CIBA-GEIGY AG in Basel (one of the predecessors of Novartis), i worked for two more years in an analytical laboratory specialized in residue analysis. My job there was developing methods for the determination of chemical residues in water, soil, plants and also in food products.
There I wrote my first computer programs (evaluation of analytical results) on a Hewlett Packard computersystem, the “HP 3357 Laboratory Automation System”.
Because I was fascinated by computer programming, I started in 1983 as a junior programmer at a small computer services company. Since then I worked as an employed developer for several companies on various computer systems and programming languages.
I worked on the following systems:
- IBM S/23 (Basic)
- IBM Series/1 (EDL)
- IBM 8100 (Cobol),
- IBM 4381 (Cobol, Rexx)
- IBM S/38 (Cobol)
- IBM AS/400 (Cobol)
- IBM RS/6000 (C)
- IBM PS/2 (C/2)
- Windows basierte PC (VB, VBA/Office, Windows-Scripting)
Among others, was involved in several projects (i.a.):
- Personal planning and time management (Industry)
- ERP systems (Retail)
- Article management systems for printed magazines (i.a. Swiss Medical Weekly, Gesnerus)
- A system for transmitting article-data of scientific publications from the Swiss Medical Weekly to the medical database PubMed.
- Subscription management for a complex system of norms (regulations for planning and construction in Switzerland)
- Database publishing systems for prepress (Swiss Medical Yearbook, Medical Calender)