25 Years a Bible Software Developer

In 1994, just after I got married, I started working on a DOS program for doing Bible searches. Yesterday, I released version 8.3 of this same program.

Of course, the original code I wrote in 1994 isn’t actually being used any more, but what originally was known as Bible Assistant was consistently re-worked and improved to eventually become the mature application today known as SwordSearcher.

Here’s a picture of me holding up the very first order form I ever received for my Bible software.

Me, holding the very first order for my Bible software.

The order form is dated December 26, 1994. (I’m outside in a short sleeve shirt because I was living in Hawaii.)

At the time this photo was taken, my “real job” was digging ditches and working on septic systems. I didn’t know it back then, but my real job was really writing Bible software.

It took me another seven years to get to the point where I would no longer need to hold down side-jobs to pay the bills. In the early 2000s, I quit my job at RadioShack, where I helped customers find batteries and resistors for five years.

Since then I have spent most of the working hours of my days developing my own Bible software and working as an independent contractor on other people’s projects.

It only dawned on me last night, as I wrote up an announcement for version 8.3 of SwordSearcher, that I had been doing this for 25 years. What tremendous grace of God I have been shown – to be able to work on technology for studying the Bible for nearly my entire adult life!

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2 thoughts on “25 Years a Bible Software Developer”

  1. Wow. I just came across your site. I pray you are well , my brother.i was raised on the old King James version. Pastor Chuck smith used it. I find the words more clearer to understand then the new translations. Im now using a Bible put out by J. Vernon McGee. I think both of them were alive when I acquired it some 35 years ago. Its showing age. But i love it because it’s been written in red felt tip by my daughter Christen. She learned to pronounce words in preschool using phonetics and would read to me from the book of Genesis chapter 1, starting with verse 1 as we sat in a big leather chair together. Now I have to go check if this version is missing all the text you brought up in your article on Westcott and Hort. I vaguely recall hearing about the two, but it’s all fuzzy now. Plus im not the same person i was then. One grows in the Lord. Ok its a 1976 edition by Thomas Nelson with Guidelines By J. Vernon McGee. I think Chuck Smith and J. Vernon McGee are reliable teachers.

    Anyway, thank you for doing what you’re doing. God called me to teach back in 82 and I’m answering the call. In my case the distance between faith and trust has been long.

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