My Wang VS computers software development work including over 30 months of assignments at Wang US & Europe centres in 1980s

Last updated on 26th March 2021

Minor update on 28th May 2022

Readers may want to see my related post: Chinese-American computer pioneer An Wang (1920-1990) and Wang Laboratories founded by him: some aspects of their history of interest to me - Part 1,  https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/04/chinese-american-computer-pioneer-wang.html , 1st April 2021 (next/previous part link is provided in each post of the 3 part series).

This post gathers material that I have written about my Wang VS computers work as parts of other posts and a book. [14th Oct. 2021 minor update: Note that new material added in other posts after this post was created or last updated (excluding minor updates) would typically not be included in this post.]

Extracts from my post: Some info. on John Chambers and his association with Wang Laboratories, based on Web articles, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2019/01/some-info-on-john-chambers-and-his.html , Jan-Feb 2019 :

First I think I need to explain my interest in John Chambers' association with Wang Laboratories, Lowell, Massachusetts, USA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories.

It comes from how critical Wang Labs and its Wang VS computers were to the building block years of my software development career. After dropping out of my M.Sc. (Physics), I joined Datamatics Limited in SEEPZ, Bombay (Mumbai), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datamatics, as a trainee programmer in March 1984. I, and others in my batch, were taught COBOL programming and other stuff like System Analysis for 4 months or so. The practical work of the COBOL programming part was on a Wang minicomputer! That was my first exposure to a computer!

Datamatics had a strong tie-up with Wang Labs. for both onsite work as well as offshore work. I went for a 12 to 15 month stint (don't recall period clearly) to Wang International Telecom Research Centre (Wang ITRC) in Belgium in 1985-86. Later from 1987 to 1989-90, I went to Wang Labs. HQ at Lowell, MA, USA for two stints: one for 7 months and one for around a year. I also handled one offshore Wang Labs. project in Datamatics office in SEEPZ, Bombay. Most of my work in the first 6 years of my software development career, from 1984 to 1990, when I was with Datamatics, was on Wang minicomputers (Wang VS line) or other Wang computers. I have had to study various Wang manuals from Computer Languages related (COBOL, 'C', PL/1, Assembly etc.), Operating System Services, to networking products specifications and design (e.g. Wang VS Videotex and Wang Banyan VINES porting) to Wang OS testing procedures.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories#The_Wang_VS_computer_line, "The first Wang VS computer was introduced in 1977, about the same time as Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX, and continues to be in use 39 years later. Its instruction set was compatible with the IBM 360 series, but it did not run any IBM 360 system software. The VS operating system and all system software were built from the ground up to support interactive users as well as batch operations. The VS was aimed directly at the business data processing market in general, and IBM in particular. While many programming languages were available, the VS was typically programmed in COBOL. Other languages supported in the VS integrated development environment included Assembler, COBOL 74, COBOL 85, BASIC, Ada, RPG II, C, PL/I, FORTRAN, Glossary, MABASIC, SPEED II and Procedure (a scripting language). Pascal was also supported for I/O co-processor development. The Wang PACE (Professional Application Creation Environment) 4GL and database was used from the mid-1980s onward by customers and third party developers to build complex applications sometimes involving many thousands of screens, hundreds of distinct application modules, and serving many hundreds of users. Substantial vertical applications were developed for the Wang VS by third party software houses throughout the 1980s in COBOL, PACE, BASIC, PL/I and RPG II. The Wang OFFICE family of applications and Wang WP were both popular applications on the VS. Word Processing ran on the VS through services that emulated the OIS environment and downloaded the WP software as "microcode" (in Wang terminology) to VS workstations."

Like Wang VS computers was the pre-dominant part of my technology platform expertise from 1984 to 1990, I think it was similar for most of my Datamatics, SEEPZ, Bombay colleagues in the 1980s. We at Datamatics were the Indian Wang software experts. There were some Wang hardware experts too but they were few (and that was not my area). Our company, Datamatics, did onsite and offshore Wang projects across the world - not only Wang HQ and offices but also with Wang customers. USA, Europe, Africa, Middle East (Arab countries) - Datamatics sent its Wang software experts everywhere!

Our technology expertise identification was as software experts on Wang VS computers. And that carried weight with Wang VS customers worldwide.

Wang computers along with other big minicomputer companies like Digital Electronics Corp. (DEC) and Data General (DG) got swept away by the PC (Windows/Unix & Intel/AMD) technological change wave. While it may have taken some years to get completely wiped out, I think it was towards the end of the 80s and early 90s that the writing was on the wall that minicomputers era is getting finished. And that impacted many of us at Datamatics who were Wang experts! We had to jump to other technology platforms to stay relevant! I jumped to the Windows and Unix PC platform in 1990 (or maybe a little earlier).

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories: "Wang Laboratories filed for bankruptcy protection in August 1992."

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer: "Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was once the leading minicomputer manufacturer, at one time the second-largest computer company after IBM. But as the minicomputer declined in the face of generic Unix servers and Intel-based PCs, not only DEC, but almost every other minicomputer company including Data General, Prime, Computervision, Honeywell and Wang Laboratories, many based in New England (hence the end of the Massachusetts Miracle), also collapsed or merged."

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[To open pic in higher resolution, right-click on pic followed by open link (NOT image) in new tab/window. In new tab/window you may have to click on pic to zoom in.]

Pic (compressed) of the original Wang Towers buildings in 2011 at which time it was owned by Cross Point. Pic courtesy:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cross_Point_Towers;_northeast_side;_Lowell,_MA;_2011-09-11.JPG, which has shared it under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The link has uncompressed version of the pic.

This article has a 1992 pic of these towers with the Wang logo on it (before it got sold to other(s)): Pic link: https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1487693801108-AP_920817011.jpeg and link of article which has the pic: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vvxby3/the-great-failure-of-wang-laboratories-the-david-to-ibms-goliath.

A video of Wang Towers from the outside as well as inside, from a "home movie" reportedly made by a Wang employee in the 1980s: WANG Towers | Lowell, Massachusetts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjVdMe3QqOY, 2 min. 21 secs. The video also shows office cubicles. I was given one such cubicle during a one year stint there in second half of 1980s. During my other stint at Wang Labs. I did not have a cubicle-office. I worked in the testing lab. (on the ground floor if I recall correctly) and shared a big conference room along with many of my Datamatics colleagues which perhaps could be viewed as our shared office room.

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Extracts from: Some thoughts based on personal experience about IT product company vs IT services company issue for Indian IT (software) companies of 1980s & 1990s, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/03/some-thoughts-based-on-personal.html , March 2021 :

In the 1980s, Datamatics was selling Wang Computers in India, hardware and also software services for it.  Datamatics was offering financial accountancy services using Wang Computers to Indian clients as well as managing public issue of shares and other related work for companies (using Wang computers Datamatics had and software packages it had developed on Wang). Some of my initial COBOL programming work in 1984-85 (after my training period was over) was for such software done in Datamatics' Nariman Point, Bombay/Mumbai offices (in Embassy Center building) which catered to Indian (domestic) clients. This Datamatics Nariman Point office had a Wang VS minicomputer on which all this work was done. Datamatics also sold time on this minicomputer to some company-customers. If I recall correctly, at that time Hoechst India (noted multinational chemical company) was one such customer who bought time on a regular basis on this minicomputer.

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I personally have worked for product development companies as a contractor ('body shopped' person) and so had close inside view of product development work. [I don't have any issues with the 'body shopped' phrase even though I know that from a higher level business perspective it is a pejorative word but then I am just a free service social media writer now and don't have to worry about customers having negative views.] I gained immense amount of knowledge and experience about software development in general, including product software development, through these contractor ('body shopped') assignments with Wang Laboratories software development centres/Headquarters in Belgium and in USA. Some of my best recommendation (appreciation) letters are from the Wang Labs. bosses and colleagues I worked with then, as a contractor from Datamatics. Readers may view them here: https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2018/12/documenting-my-part-auto-bio-with-pics_27.html . These contractor-assignment trips to Wang Labs. in Belgium and USA in the second half of 1980s for a total period of over 30 months, when age-wise I was in my twenties, gave me fantastic exposure to life in these materially well developed countries. I had a very good time overall as I was treated very well by the many European and American colleagues I interacted with then, and I was treated decently by most Europeans and Americans I interacted with outside of the workplace. I also had a lot of enjoyable sight-seeing trips, many of which I recall easily even today and are happy recollections 😃. So such contractor ('body shopped') assignments were a great boon to me both from a software developer professional perspective as well as from personal life experience perspective. As I have become a social media writer over the past few years, I have written in support of the values of democracy, freedom of religion (including to not have faith/religion), rule of law, free market, business entrepreneurship, orderly town/city life, civic sense etc. that I was exposed to directly in Western Europe and USA during my life there while on assignment stints, and also later indirectly in various other roles I played based in India and in my later readings about Europe and USA. In general, I am a supporter of Western Europe and USA due to the many positive experiences, directly & indirectly, I have had of them.

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Extracts from: Wonderful work by itihaasa.com to capture some aspects of Indian I.T. history from I.T. leaders' viewpoints; My views on some videos & articles, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/01/wonderful-service-done-by-itihaasacom.html , Jan. 2021

Based on my experience in later decades, I think what happened was that some expertise in software development in Indian software industry came through developing software for local requirements. But tie-ups with foreign computer manufacturers (like Wang in Datamatics' case), may have brought in some level of initial training help from foreign (USA typically) computer companies in software development on their platforms, along with export orders for software development from customers of those computer companies (like Datamatics got Wang customers' orders). The low salaries of Indian programmers then made the price paid for such (custom-built) software export projects a competitive one, attracting these foreign customers. While I am not sure about it, I think there would have been some initial training help from these foreign computer companies which seems to have been enough to have a set of trained persons in the Indian partner companies who in turn trained other Indian programmers thereby becoming independent of the foreign computer company experts in that particular technology area (e.g. COBOL programming on Wang VS platform which was a key software development platform for Datamatics in 1980s). Note that COBOL would have been known to Datamatics programmers but Wang VS platform and COBOL on Wang VS specifics including file system (e.g. ISAM files) would have had to be learned by the first set of Datamatics programmers who did such work. By the time I joined Datamatics in March 1984 as a trainee programmer, Datamatics had lot of COBOL on Wang VS experts, with some of them teaching us trainee programmers that technology.

Another angle was that the foreign computer companies were willing to explore using Indian programmers from their Indian partner company as contractors on foreign computer company sites, in projects in technology areas which were rather new to the Indian partner company. This was due to a combination of low costs of Indian programmers and quick learning ability demonstrated by Indian programmers. After the first of such projects in a new technology area (new for the Indian partner company) was done by Indian programmers on foreign sites, these Indian programmers on coming back to the Indian company office, would train other Indian programmers in those areas, if there was such a need. I personally have been one of such Indian programmers learning a variety of technologies (e.g. 'C'  programming, Videotex, Banyan VINES network in 1980s) which were new to me, mainly by going to Wang Laboratories development centres in USA and Europe. Yes, in some cases, I did do some self-learning for a few weeks in India prior to going onsite (like 2 colleagues and me, self-learned basic aspects of 'C' programming using Kernighan & Ritchie book and a Wang PC with a 'C' compiler, for a few weeks before flying out to a Wang software development centre in Brussels, Belgium in 1985). But that was only the initial learning. The main learning came from working on the on-site project.

So foreign computer company tie-ups where the foreign computer company was willing to take in hard working and low-cost Indian programmers on projects where they were not very knowledgeable about the related technology to start with, I think, has played a significant role in growth of Indian software industry expertise over the years. I should mention that eventually in late 1980s, I was able to successfully lead an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) email gateway project done for Wang Laboratories, USA in Datamatics SEEPZ, Mumbai, India involving technologies of Unix, X.400, X.500, Sendmail, TCP/IP, OPEN/OFFICE and C. It was prior contracting work onsite at Wang Labs. development centres in USA & Europe that equipped me with the skills and the confidence to successfully lead that project work in India. 

[My industry work experience info.: https://ravisiyer.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/raviiyerindustryworkexperience.pdf .] 

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Extracts from my book Autobiography of an Indian Software Techie and Spiritual Aspirant – Part 1 , https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/p/autobiography-of-indian-software-techie.html [PDF download link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_dFuX_oNd9iUy7z7fqAXbuyMRtPJRr2U ] (extracts below have few slightly edited sentences) :

[From pages 70 - 71:]

Datamatics had a tie-up with US minicomputer company, Wang Labs., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories, [11th March 2021: New link seems to be https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery/equipment/wang-computer-gallery-2 . Following original link is broken:] http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/collections-gallery/wang-computer-gallery-2. 

Computer time or system time as we used to call it then was rationed. We worked on computer terminals which were connected to a mini-computer inside a separate heavily air-conditioned room. I think we were encouraged to print out the typed in programs and then manually check for both compilation and logical errors. This brought in a discipline of checking code on paper as against on terminal. The joy of getting an error-free compilation (after removal of compilation errors) and then, after some debugging usually, getting a successful run of a batch program or successful operation of an “on-line” program was indescribable! [A batch program would read from input data files, update data files and/or write to output data files with either no terminal interaction with the user or very limited interaction. An “on-line” program, may read from input data files, but would have significant amount of “screen” (which in today’s software technology will correspond to the term “form”) and keyboard (screen and keyboard together being referred to as terminal) interaction with the user, may update data files and/or create output files.] The terminal, to all intents and purposes, was a ‘dumb’ terminal with all processing work being done on the mini-computer in the computer room. The mini-computer had the disk drives containing the data files, attached to it. We worked on a Wang VS 80 system, IIRC. Here are some pictures and info. about a similar Wang VS 85 system, [11th March 2021: New link seems to be: https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery/equipment/wang-vs85 . Original link is broken now:] http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/wang-vs85.

[From pages 74 - 77:]

After training we started on live projects. Very quickly I made a name for myself as a programmer - COBOL then on Wang-VS. [Please excuse me blowing my own bugle. I felt it important to capture these aspects of my journey accurately (from my point of view), even if it makes me seem immodest at times.]

My initial “live” projects were COBOL programming work for some (Persian) Gulf clients done in SEEPZ. I think one of the projects was for a motor vehicles registration government department of a Gulf country. I was able to do them quite well, I think. But I may have become over-confident as I recall one particular program which I did not test very well and whose bugs were reported to me by my team leader with quite some disappointment. I was quite embarrassed by the bugs and became more serious about testing my programs before handing it over to my project leader. I got exposed to real-life program specifications, various types of programs like simple Master maintenance ones and more complex transaction/processing ones. Time allotted for the programming varied depending on the complexity bucket the program had been put into.

Later I was sent to Datamatics’ Nariman Point office housed in a building called Embassy Centre. While I did not realize it properly then, I got exposed to life in the main business district of the country’s financial capital, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nariman_Point! Embassy Centre office (our office in it) was far more cramped than our SEEPZ office as space in Nariman Point was at a real premium. It was more of an operations center than a development center. Many customers would rent time at the Data Center there housing Wang-VS minicomputers. There was also Data Processing (DP) work that Datamatics would do for its customers which would involve programming as well as operations. Perhaps the biggest DP activity was related to registration and transfer of shares. Some of the new share issues that we handled would be mentioned in the financial pages of the Times of India!

I recall doing some modifications for share transfer programs as well as program(s) that did the allotment of shares for a new issue. It was quite complicated stuff. Far more complicated than the motor vehicle registration type project work that I had done earlier in SEEPZ. Understanding the existing program itself was perhaps the biggest challenge. Then I had to make modifications being careful that the changes done did not break the existing functionality of the program. The really scary part was that there would be an operations run of these programs and bugs could result in operations guys catching them and reporting it, which could be very embarrassing! The overall statistics ‘controls’ that the various programs in the system would print helped operations people get a top-view of the program run. These ‘controls’ allowed them to get some idea whether the program run was successful or not.

There was a lot of difference in atmosphere between the software development part of the office and the operations part. The software development part was quiet and somewhat focused whereas the operations part was a beehive of usually noisy activity. Operators would be loading and unloading “Disk packs” on computers in the air-conditioned computer room [I think the name used those days for such a room was ‘computer room’ but I am not sure – I don’t think the ‘server’ term was in vogue then and so we did not call it ‘server room’ (which is what is in vogue today).] IIRC, we then had 75 MB (not GB) removable disk packs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_pack. In some parts of the operations section, heavy duty Wang line printers would be clattering away on huge bundles on continuous stationery. I could not find an appropriate image of the Wang line printers we used then but this wiki page gives some info. and images about line printers in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_printer. [BTW it was a very proprietary computer setup those days. The computer, terminals, printers, disk packs, cables etc. would all have to be from Wang. It was not an open specifications world where one could mix and match various hardware components from various vendors to make up a computer system, at least the mini-computer and mainframe systems. Personal computers (PCs) were not yet that popular in Bombay/India.] 

[From pages 80 - 81:]

Less than a year (IIRC) after I was sent to the Nariman point office of Datamatics, I was asked to go back to its SEEPZ office and take up the task of being the main COBOL programming trainer for the next batch! Most of the batch fellows were management graduates who were either as old as me or elder to me. It was quite a psychological challenge to stand in front of them and teach. I think I managed to do a decent job of it. In 2018, when I reconnected to one of the guys in this batch, a Chartered Accountant, his way of confirming who I was, was asking me whether I was their group teacher! 😀. 

Later I was asked to attend a VS Assembler training program conducted by a senior techie of Datamatics, as I think Wang Labs. was looking for VS Assembler programmers to be sent on contract assignments to their offices in USA & Europe. I think I did quite well in this training program. I loved reading the mini-computer (processor/assembly) instructions manual and figuring out how things are done at the low instruction level. Suddenly the track changed and three of us were told that we were being sent on assignment to Wang's telecommunications research centre in Brussels, Belgium and would need to learn 'C' programming. We were given a copy of the K&R C book [The C Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language ] and a computer (PC type) with the C compiler, and a month for self-learning! Shortly after the month or so of self-learning, the three of us found ourselves on an international flight, my first international flight, out of Bombay to Brussels sometime in 1985! We were given advice by a senior director that we should avoid talking about two things - politics and religion 😀.

[From pages 81 - 82:]

The first assignment in Brussels lasted for a period from between one year to one year and 3 months (I don't clearly recall the period) with a break in between when I returned to India. Technically I got into 'C' language programming in a big way - doing an application layer component of private Videotex system for Wang. Socially I got exposed to Europe but faced language problems as I did not know French. As Brussels was an important centre in Europe with lots of foreigners, English did get understood by quite some people. With the first foreign trip, though we were paid only a living allowance (500 USD equivalent IIRC) but with free accommodation, as my salary in India was being paid in full, the financial picture brightened significantly.

[From pages 86 - 93:]

This first foreign stay starting from sometime in 1985 of over a year in Brussels, a major European capital, made a tremendous impact on my life. The sheer material prosperity that I saw and the far superior standard of living of almost everybody I saw in the city, as compared to what I had seen in Bombay and Dombivli, did make me admire Brussels. I used to travel by bus & tram to work and to visit other places in the city. I also used the metro when needed. What a world of difference there was between Brussels suburban transport and Bombay suburban transport! Shops were so well organized and clean. The city itself was so well maintained as compared to even Bombay, let alone Dombivli. Yes, I had seen all these aspects in movies and read about it in books but experiencing it for over a year made these differences so vivid and so real.

The colleagues in the office, Wang International Telecommunications Research Centre (Wang ITRC), were mostly Flemish (a variant of Dutch) speaking Belgians and a few French speaking Belgians. There were some foreign immigrant to Belgium types too – one was Iranian/Iraqi, who was also very friendly. It was a small group of people – maybe 20 to 30 odd. Bulk of the office staff seemed to be very proficient technically – perhaps they were all well qualified and trained telecommunications and software engineers/researchers. At technical level my immediate boss was a Mr. Jan Wirix. The higher level technical boss was, IIRC, a Hungarian, Mr. Georges Fodor.

Jan gave all three of us some ‘C’ programming assignment(s) and a few weeks to do it, IIRC. We were told that if we are able to do it satisfactorily we were on, else we go back 😀. We slogged away and did what seems to have been a satisfactory job and so we were accepted in the team.

I was given the job of developing the Order Entry response pages of a private Videotex system, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex, for Wang. Videotex delivered information to the user over the telephone line as pages of text to typically a Television set but it could also be a special Videotex terminal I believe. User input to the system was through a small key pad in case of Television – the special Videotex terminal seems to have had its own keypad. The assignment was a great learning experience for me. My stuff was on the application layer of the networking stack. The Internet was not widespread or well-known then. How far have network connectivity and reliability, and network products come now! The Internet is being considered a revolutionary force by many. This has been utterly mind-boggling change having unbelievably high level of social impact/transformation in a matter of just a few decades.

But at that time, the telecommunication stuff that I saw in Wang ITRC was very sophisticated stuff to me. On the software side, you had people who exuded technical confidence handling layers of the network stack like transport layer, sessions layer etc. of the Videotex product. The lab./server rooms kind of place was full of equipment some of which had their covers removed. Having had a COBOL programming applications background so far, hardware was a very unknown area to me. At Datamatics we had hardware engineers who would handle any hardware related issues. Here at Wang ITRC, the same guy would handle both software and was knowledgeable enough usually to handle quite a bit of hardware issues himself. I was quite in awe of them considering that I knew almost nothing then about opening up a computer and dismantling and re-assembling its parts. [I learned a lot about it after I moved to Puttaparthi. I was forced to repair my home computer as the very few computer repair chaps in Puttaparthi were quite hard-to-get or not-so-knowledgeable and so I learned a fair bit about fixing PC hardware problems.]

Modems were the strange things to me then which was very important in the lab. there as external users would use their telephone lines to connect to the Videotex system running on computers in the lab, IIRC. I lacked the theoretical background to understand the role the modem played then. But these chaps were so fluent in talking about it and other networking jargon that I felt myself to be quite ignorant about networking. I recall the term ‘null modem’ being bandied about and me wondering what it is.

Anyway, I learned later that I did not need to know all this stuff for my work which was at a top layer. I had to simply focus on understanding the services the layer immediately below my stuff, that is the presentation layer, offers. For that I needed to read the documentation put out by the person doing the presentation layer and interact with him to get my doubts clarified. For the specification of my Order Entry module, I was given a product definition document by Jan. I had to understand that, put out some documents related to design and then get the job done in ‘C’ programming language using the Presentation layer services. That’s it. The rest of the Videotex product stuff was something that I could learn for my own knowledge improvement including the hardware, networking jargon, modems, making a null modem etc., if I wanted but it was not necessary. I tended to learn more about the networking software bit like the OSI layers (perhaps I did some reading of Tanenbaum’s Computer Networks book on it then) than the hardware part like wiring up a null modem.

I learned a lot of ‘C’ programming then. My initial version of the software used global variables all over the place! That came from my COBOL programming background. I had not understood the advantages of information hiding by using automatic variables and reducing global variables to an absolute minimum. As I faced bugs during testing I realized what a headache it had become to debug the program due to lack of a structured programming approach. I had some extra time on my hands as others in the team needed more time to get their pieces done. I completely redesigned my module using the structured programming approach that ‘C’ provides, extensively using automatic variables (information hiding) and reducing global variables to an absolute minimum. The redesigned program got done in a few weeks time even though the first version had taken many months to do. By now I was so clear about the module that what had taken me months to do initially I could redo in a structured way in a matter of weeks! The K&R ‘C’ book was my bible during this period. I don’t think I have studied any technical book as closely and as many times as I have studied this book. What a masterpiece of a technical book! From the book’s wiki page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language, “The book was central to the development and popularization of the C programming language and is still widely read and used today. Because the book was co-authored by the original language designer, and because the first edition of the book served for many years as the de facto standard for the language, the book was regarded by many to be the authoritative reference on C.” 

I also learned a great lesson about version control and the right attitude to customer reported bugs. IIRC some travel agents/companies were beta customers for the Wang VS Videotex product of ours. One London, UK, beta site reported a problem with a Videotex page which was a response page (as against a static page) and so my Order Entry module came into play. I was given the dump data with the problem description from the customer. This dealt with an earlier version of my module. I tried to recreate the problem using the latest version of my Order Entry module but could not recreate the problem. So I concluded that whatever problem the beta site customer had has been solved. Further I did the very, very stupid act of deleting the customer dump data.

Georges (boss of the technical team to whom Jan reported) called me and lectured me that I did not fix the bug but made it disappear (hid it)! I stuck to my guns. I was a real over-confident fellow then about some things. I felt I know my stuff well and I am right in this matter. Georges wouldn’t let go. The lecture went for an hour, IIRC! But I did not relent – what a foolish fellow I was then!

Later a similar problem was reported by someone else and it turned out that response pages tended to have a large chunk of data to be sent across the wire, and when the chunk of data exceeded a particular limit (4K IIRC), the transport layer function failed. That resulted in the connection getting cut which was also what happened in the bug reported to me earlier. The transport layer issue got fixed.

When I heard all this, I realized that if I had done my bug analysis properly maybe this issue would have been discovered earlier. By not doing a proper analysis and then deleting the data related to the error, I had committed a cardinal sin in software development. I was very embarrassed but I don’t think I had the courage of character then to go up to Georges and acknowledge my mistake. Today if I come across Georges on the net somewhere I think I would like to acknowledge that mistake (I wonder if he would remember it though)!

I also learned how important it was to test return codes from functions and handle error conditions. Handling error conditions and capturing it in a status log was not trivial – sometimes it took significant chunk of time. But code that did it was far more robust and amenable to easy analysis of behavior of the code. I don’t think I learned all of the vital aspects of error handling in this assignment itself but I did learn a significant part of it and had realized how vital it is for developing reliable code.

After the redesign of the code I came to really like the code I had done. I was proud of it – to me it was a thing of beauty as well as functional performance. I had started on my journey of doing not just functional software but elegant software (including elegant code) that could get appreciated by myself and others – that I could be proud of having done.

All the colleagues were very helpful to the three of us. In particular there were two secretaries (ladies), a senior one and a junior one. Both of them took particular care of ensuring that we settled down. They were very friendly and I even visited the home of at least one of them. Some of the other colleagues invited us to their homes. One colleague’s home was far away in French speaking Belgium and so he would stay during the week in a flat/small place in Brussels and go on weekends to his home and family. That person became very friendly with us and we used to spend fair amount of evening time together. He also invited all three of us to his home on some weekend which I still recall as we enjoyed that visit. 

[From page 97:]

In my stay in Brussels, Belgium for around 15 months in 1985-86, I frequented a Polish run pub near to the studio flat (with cleaning service and so somewhat like a hotel) provided by my customer company Wang International Telecommunications Research Centre, on Avenue Louise.

[From pages 98 - 99:]

For those who are interested, this is how 212 Avenue Louise building where our studio flats were located, looks like now on Google View: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Avenue+Louise+212,+1050+Bruxelles,+Belgium While there have been some changes, I do recognize the area from what I recall of it then. Now the building seems to be a hotel called ibis Styles Bruxelles Louise hotel. I don't think that was the name then. Note that our studio flats were serviced by staff (cleaning etc.) and so it was somewhat like a hotel room. But I don't recall it to be a regular hotel like it is now - however I am not sure of my recollections in this regard.

We were three guys sent to Brussels by our Mumbai/Bombay software company, Datamatics and we were provided two studio flats connected to each other, with four beds.

Some pics from its website: The entrance to the building: https://www.hotel-ibisstyles-bruxelles.com/images/galerie-hotel/JPEG/2812-63.jpg.

How the building profile looks: https://www.hotel-ibisstyles-bruxelles.com/images/galerie-hotel/JPEG/3336-37.jpg (this I think is quite the same like then - we could see Avenue Louise from french windows on one side of our connected studio-flats.)

[From page 101:]

In the next three years and some months (till 1990) that I was with Datamatics I went abroad to USA for 2 assignments for a total of over one and a half years (maybe the first US assignment started before my bond period expired); went to Netherlands for 2 months for a study; executed off-shore projects in India for foreign customers. Most of the work I did in these three years were systems software type: SMTP gateway, Network operating system backup program , Word processing utilities, study of Windowing systems - X-Windows, Microsoft Windows ... Programming languages mainly used were C, Wang VS Assembler (similar to IBM 360 Assembler, I was informed), PL/1 and some small exposure to C++.

[The two USA stints mentioned above were big events in my life as I got wonderful exposure to USA and the good life in USA. I had access to a car and along with my friends drove extensively in some parts of the USA. For most of the totally around 19 month period of my two Wang Labs. Lowell, USA assignments, I was provided living quarters in Royal Crest, Nashua, New Hampshire. One apartment had two bedrooms and was shared by two of us. Here are some pics of Royal Crest Nashua from their website (takes a little time to load): https://www.royalcrestnashua.com/en/apartments/photo-gallery.html. As of now, I am not in a position to write more about my USA assignment stints. Hopefully, a future update to this book should cover more about them and their great impact on me.]

[From page 111 - 112:]

I had experienced Wang Labs., USA layoffs of its employees while I was on-contract there (me and colleagues from Datamatics being the cheaper alternative) and felt quite troubled by seeing such layoffs. In one particular case, a senior technical man was given the pink slip and then accompanied by a security man & the dept. head from his window office to the elevators. As the senior technical man crossed my cubicle he looked at me. I did not know what was happening - that he was getting laid off. The look was not of anger but it certainly had some discomfort and unhappiness. It affected me badly when I came to know later that he had been laid off. Perhaps as he looked at me, he blamed me for stealing his job though I was not involved in any way with his work. The young foreign Asian contract worker stealing the veteran American's job - that may have been the story line from some American perspectives!

I wanted to first do offshore development and then, the fantastic dream of creating software products in India. That would completely avoid facing these unhappy you-are-stealing-my-job looks from Americans (& Europeans).

There is an important point about me being an odd man out when I went abroad for my assignments, especially to the USA. Most of my colleagues fixed up a job in the USA by the end of their assignment and stayed back. The standard of living difference between USA and India in the 80s was huge. But for my spiritual and cultural leanings, I too may have joined most of my friends and settled down in the USA.

--- end extracts from my book ---

Additional info:

Here's a pic of a Wang dumb terminal similar or same as the one I would typically use in 1984, https://ingeniumcanada.org/ingenium/collection-research/collection-item.php?id=2002.0358.002. [If the page does not show the terminal image, you may try the image link directly: http://source.techno-science.ca/artifacts-artefacts/images/2002.0358.002.aa.cs.png .]

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In my associated LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ravi-s-iyer-13a55310_my-wang-vs-computers-software-development-activity-6776025489829179392-X-ns ,  Jan Baan (I.T. entrepreneur, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Baan ) commented (and was OK with sharing comment here):

Nice Ravi to bring the old and important history again into the picture. Especially with the perfect details, you're informing us. Like this!

Those days many people became afraid of #Wang, becoming the new #IBM. 

Founder An Wang seems very proud of building his building on route 128 in Boston like a W, by looking out of an airplane. Impressive buildings which I remember from visiting them to investigate partnering with them. They had a big office those days in Culemburg, the Netherlands, like their European gateway. 

Later on, the Dutch entrepreneur Ton Risseeuw from Getronics bought Wang, which became a disaster. 

They were too narrow limited with their excellent hardware only to facilitate the secretary workers with a good word program. 

Their hardware was those days was promising like DEC. They could have done much more, but they were killed by the software of Wordperfect, and later on, Microsoft blocked Wordperfect due to their monopoly of the MS-Dos PC. 

Like the nice innovation of the #Netscape browser. 

Lessons to learn today: Try to avoid #VendorLockin.

-----

I responded (slightly edited):

Thank you so much Jan for your valuable encouragement and very interesting views.

Fascinating to know that you had visited Wang Labs. HQ at Lowell to explore partnering with them.

Interesting info. about Wang's Netherlands office. Had read about Dutch company Getronics buying Wang after Wang had run into hard times. Sad to know that "became a disaster". 

Great lesson message at the end of your comment, "Try to avoid hashtag#VendorLockin."

----------

I additionally wrote:

I also wanted to mention that I plan to put up a post on some aspects of the bio of An Wang based on his IEEE Computer biography, along with some comments from me.

Actually, it was while I was in the initial stages of composing the An Wang related post, that this post about my Wang work came about. I had to explain to readers why I was so interested in An Wang biography and that needed a background of my Wang computers days. So I first put up this post collecting the info. from various other posts & my book.

Now I plan to continue work on the An Wang related post where I will refer to this post for readers who want to know more about my Wang days.

When An Wang started Wang company he had very little money. So it is a fascinating computer/I.T. entrepreneur story.

I hope to get the An Wang post published in the next few days.

-----

26th March 2021 update: In one of the assignments to Wang Labs., Lowell, (MA, USA) in second half of 1980s, I was made "Resident Manager" of the 30 to 40 odd Datamatics employees that were working on assignments at Wang Labs. This was additional work on top of the assignment work that I was doing. As "Resident Manager" I had to interact with the key Wang Labs. executive who was the contact point for Datamatics: Mr. Pradeep Barthakur, Vice-President of Wang Labs. (there were many Vice-Presidents in Wang then). I had a few interesting interactions with him then.

Here's an obituary of him in the Lowell Sun dated 7th May 2003:  https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/lowellsun/obituary.aspx?n=pradeep-barthakur&pid=994855 . It refers to him as a local businessman who was a long-time employee at "Lowell's former computer giant, Wang Laboratories" and that he died on 3rd May (2003). He was born in Assam, India in 1940 and moved to USA at the age of 18 for his Mathematics graduate degree at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. It states, "In 1969, Mr. Barthakur began working at Wang and served as its director of quality assurance for 20 years. Prior to his illness, he was president of Datamatics America Inc."

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Readers may want to see my related posts listed below:

*) Chinese-American computer pioneer An Wang (1920-1990) and Wang Laboratories founded by him: some aspects of their history of interest to me - Part 1,  https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/04/chinese-american-computer-pioneer-wang.html , 1st April 2021 (next/previous part link is provided in each post of the series). Part 3 is in-progress, as of 14th Oct. 2021, but already has a section on the first Wang VS computer models introduced in October 1977,  https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/10/chinese-american-computer-pioneer-wang.html .

*) Some general quotations of An Wang from his book: Lessons: An Autobiography,  https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/06/some-general-quotations-of-wang-from.html , 30th June 2021.

[I thank wikipedia and the Lowell Sun, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extracts from their websites (very small extracts from Lowell Sun) on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]