Building an Inventory Management Application

My dad was practically a double major in college in math and physics, and if he had done some time in a school he could have taught either. Instead, he ended up at a small company working with the first computers. On this very old platform he worked on a spell checker for a an antique (by today’s standards) word processor and brought into my family the first computer that could run MS-DOS (it was a separate program on top of JCLGEN) and taught me BASIC.

I’ve got programming in my blood, as he is still programming (albeit now in databases and JAVA), I’m writing C# as well as other query languages, and my oldest son looks to take on front end web development. It seems to run in the family.

One of the programs that my dad built for himself was a way to keep the books for the church as he has been the treasurer for his home church for quite some time. The early form of it was quite primitive– all in DOS with the ability to key in values, move up and down lists to choose things, and it spit out the reports just as he wanted. He has since switched to Quick Books, but he used this program for over 30 years!

And now I find myself in a similar position. Though I’m not a church treasurer, I have started up a small business reselling items through various channels, but the way that I purchase these items doesn’t lend itself well to Quick Books– at least, I don’t think it does. Plus, I want the added ability to have the system help me to figure out what to buy and when, and to integrate with various online tools that I use.

So that means I’m building it.

I have pieces. I’ve used a database to help me do my taxes the past couple of years, but it isn’t anywhere near what I want yet. So I’m hoping to take you along the journey. Maybe I also get to use these blog posts to show my son how to do it, or maybe I just talk about interesting items along the way.

I won’t bore you with everything, but I’ll at least discuss the specific parts I’m building, if only to help solidify in my mind what I’m going to do. So thanks for joining on this journey!