Articles - A Potted history

Index of Articles


I've been writing on and off for over 30 years now and not so long ago found articles written by myself and my father Peter Bolton in 1976/1977 when I was 17. Back then we were into wargames, specifcally Strategy & Tactics Magazine wargames and tabletop games. For my sins I was the (don't laugh) 1979 N. Ireland wargames champion. Ah heady days! In 1976 the UK importer of S&T (Malcolm Watson) launched Phoenix magazine. You can find the articles from it here. There are three articles of mine there.

Computer Articles

I had one article appear in 'Practical Computing' in 1980, and 'Computing Today'. Neither of which exists anymore. I had more two or three articles appear in with Vic Computing in 1982/1983 which became Commodore user (see Commodore User as I owned a Vic before changing to a Cbm-64. Then I started Choice Software and was too busy developing games to write anything for the next 8 years. (And getting married, moving from N. Ireland to England, changing jobs etc),

Then along came "Program Now" magazine around 1988. I started BATPUG- The Borland and Turbo Pascal User Group and published it for three years and at its peak had over 250 members. Out of that I managed to get Technical reviewing for Wrox and Addison-Wesley books. (Unpaid but you kept the books) and the Program Now editor Clive Grace started publishing my articles and I got the Pascal programming column a year or two later. Back then Turbo Pascal was popular though starting to decline. (Damn that Turbo C!). For the next three years I churned out my column plus 1-2 other articles, reviews etc. If there was an exotic- ie non mainstream compiler to be reviewed, it was most likely my job. Ada!- No probs. APL. Yup.

The Pascal column was fun. For 36 issues, I churned out approx 1,800 words and original ~500 line programs each and every month. Not the easiest but I managed to keep it up until the magazine folded in 1994. A sad blow to my income! Some months I was earning £720.

Then the web came along and I wrote five articles for Delphi Developer. These were meaty very technical articles. Since then I've been mainly blogging and creating websites.

Update July 2017

Since I wrote this in the early noughties, I've since written for About.com who have gone bust, but much of that stuff is now up on thoughtco.com.

I also write for both Dice US and Dice UK.

If you want technology articles (including code in many programming languages) and/or reviews from an experienced technology writer- contact me.