[geeks] Oh my god...

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 12:07:54PM -0500, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On Friday, November 29, 2002, at 11:52 AM, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> >>> I expect that most new VB projects will be .NET projects in the
> >>>near future, and whether you've seen it or not, there are lots of
> >>>corporations doing VB development.
> >>
> >>  Who?  Where?
> >
> >Pfizer.  Armstrong World Industries. Fog Creek Software (OK, they 
> >aren't
> >that big, but their leader, Joel Spolsky, has a fair amount of fame in
> >certain less acedemic programming circles).  Ryder.
> 
>   Ryder and Pfizer sell PC app software?

You didn't say sell VB apps, you said who in response to there exist
large VB projects from large companies.

As to actually selling VB, most of it is people selling addins, active x
controls, and presumable .NET components in the near future.  MS is
forcing all it's VB users over to .NET, except for the ones who refuse
to upgrade, that is.
 
> >  Microhelp (Their
> >uninstaller product was written in VB, but I think the company has gone
> >out of business).  These are just off the top of my head.
> 
>   Ok, fair enough.
> 
> >Lots of companies are looking for VB programmers, which I take to mean
> >they do projects in VB, but that doesn't mean they are major projects.
> 
>   Ok Josh, VB is taking over the world.  I'll delete all of my C 
> compilers.

That's not my point, and you know it.  My point is that VB is out there,
and while it isn't being used in flashy products, it is being used a
lot.  And in my experience so far, the people who know enough to know
why VB sucks aren't listened to by the desicion makers, and for whatever
reason, they feel compelled to keep the job anyway (like, maybe they are
using it to pay for school, or perhaps they can't afford to switch jobs
because if they do so, their families pre-existing conditions won't be
covered, or perhaps they lived life beyond their means and would find
them selves backrupt if they had a months unemployment or took a
paycut).  Well, that isn't really my point, that was just the ground
work for it.

My point was that despite all MS's clamor about .NET and C#, the real
force in the .NET movement is initially going to be VB.NET since MS is
forcing all VB developers who aren't strong enough to refuse to upgrade
to use .NET.  So, unless MS gives up, .NET is going to become a major
force, but it doesn't have to be the only one.  Despite MS's efforts,
Java seems to be a growing force.  Already, one can write python code
that plays in the java arena, and one can write scheme code to play in
the java field, and I think it is possible to write new java objects
that can be called by other java objects using these languages, but I'm
not familiar enough with this level of java development to really say.

In other notes, exactly how bad is .NET?  I keep going back and forth.
Obviously .NET itself is awefull.  And I can't see any justification of
C#, except as a "java killer" (and I don't see why we need one).
However, having a CLR is interesting, and it seems that Mono and dotGNU
are rapidly coming along.  I just hope that people who make language
plugins for those two provide type translation for the language standard
types and classes rather than forcing us to use the Mono and dotGNUT
equivelents like MS does.

Another option to a common run time seems to be picking a sane system
and building bridges.  So, we are well on the way to seeing python,
objective-c, and, I believe, smalltalk interact as if everything was
written in one language, thanks to bridges connecting python to
objective C, and smalltalk to objective C.  But, again, I'm not really
up to speed on these either, so I can't speak with much surity.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd