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Do you *NEED* .NET? Can you learn something else? Something cross platform, maybe? Surely there's something out there that will do the job?

Actually, VB6 was not anywhere near as deterministic as you think it was.

VB6 was based on the COM model (which is one reason it was so easy to interface with COM). While COM does usually release objects when the reference count reaches 0, it's not required to, and can do so when it makes sense.

VB is basically just as garbage collected as VB.NET is. The only difference is that VB.NET is a little more lackadaisical about finalizing, which is why features like the using keyword in C# are so nice (I wish VB had it).

I realize that a conversion is still a lot of work, but it's nowhere near the work that a rewrite is, though of course the real cost is retesting everything.

There *ARE* lots of business reasons to rewrite as well. There are a ton of productivity enhancements coming down the pipe, and a ton of new windows foundation features you can take advantage of (for example, the Windows Workflow Foundation, which an amazing number of VB/database sytle apps could make very good use of).

No doubt, it's hard to stay on top of technology. That's the inherant cost of it. Even Java deprecates features and makes changes.

The problem here is that VB -> VB.NET was a major jump. But, in my mind, it was a necessary one, and the right choice. I think MS could have made extra effort to improve the conversion process, but that's a different argument.

You might also consider the cost of a commerical migration tool, such as ArtinSoft's http://www.artinsoft.com/

You might also want to read this article:

http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2003_06/online/meader /

In the end, you can't sit still. Plus ca Change.

Ahh now you make much more sense, and i see your gripe with the article (i will add it to my long list of gripes with the article).

A more useful test would be to observe how quickly the box would be compromised if the assailants were specifically targetting the box and knew exactly which OS it was running, what patch level, and had the correct tools available to use it.

Interestingly, what you suggest has already been tried and dismissed by the infallible moderators of slashdot. Case dismissed. NEXT! :)

Actually, while I was reading some of that stuff... made me so angry I thought "Let those ignorant Windows users keep on thinking that their beloved OS is uncompromisable. I don't need them enlightened anytime soon." Now I know why others do advocacy and NOT me :)

The reason why Microsoft can't radically alter .NET is because of the existance of legacy apps. The company I work for has thousands of man-hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars into our ASP.NET applications. Microsoft can't break these applications.

Really? VB.net is not backward compatibile with VB6. How many millions of man hours were spent writing VB code that now has to be rewritten to play in .net? Microsoft is concerned with their own position. You will be screwed over insofar as you are still willing to buy the product, and it forwards their aims.

All versions of Windows since 2000 have supported them. They're known as Layered Windows and are manipulated through the SetLayeredWindowAttributes API.

For example, see this article.

why wouldn't you upgrade? office 2003 will let you save and load xml formatted documents. they're even publishing their schema.

whitepaper

i've used the betas, i've seen it work. it's not a proprietary binary stream wrapped in xml headers - it's a fully ascii, 100% fidelity xml represented word document. with schema.

the binary formats always change every major version. it's doubtfully due simply to malice, it's more likely due to increased business pressure to cram more features in.

but all that aside, compatibility is the primary reason to upgrade to 2003.

it -supports- drm, which per usual, is optional and being demanded by their customers.

you can hate them all you want for that - but seeing as how the DRM is optional, and how office 2003 is the first version of office to support an open xml format for saving/loading documents - it's hard to not recommend the move to 2003.

if you dont like the drm, don't use it - but the xml support will make it easier than ever to slowly migrate the office workers to OpenOffice.

MS sponsored white paper at ftponline

(I am not a troll, i'm just a realist who has to live with the requirements the suits give me.)

Here's the link again for those who are curious:
http://www.ftponline.com/reports/javaone/2003/roun dtable/

1. I have heard that Gosling says he works so much on forward-thinking projects at Sun that he'd prefer others to comment on the real-world use of Java today in industry.

2. As for why IBM developers weren't there, all I can say is that they were invited (as they were last year, when they participated in the roundtable discussion). However, they refused to come, and indeed boycotted JavaOne entirely.

The person who began this thread should've read further down the first page of the article: "Moderator Simon Phipps began by welcoming some new faces at the table and arching his eyebrows in surprise at the one big no-show this year: IBM's apparent boycott of JavaOne. Despite IBM's absence, they were not ignored in the ensuing conversation."

Later during the Java Technology Achievement Awards, cosponsored by Sun and Java Pro magazine, Mark Bauhaus, vice-president of Java Web services at Sun, commented on IBM's no-show at this year's JavaOne, despite their wins at the event. Although this line didn't make it in the final report online, I heard him say, "All of the other J2EE players are here with enthusiasm: BEA, Oracle, Borland, you name it. It is too bad that one of our important partners evidently chose not to participate."

The report on that event is here:
http://www.ftponline.com/reports/javaone/2003/awar ds/

Here's the link again for those who are curious:
http://www.ftponline.com/reports/javaone/2003/roun dtable/

1. I have heard that Gosling says he works so much on forward-thinking projects at Sun that he'd prefer others to comment on the real-world use of Java today in industry.

2. As for why IBM developers weren't there, all I can say is that they were invited (as they were last year, when they participated in the roundtable discussion). However, they refused to come, and indeed boycotted JavaOne entirely.

The person who began this thread should've read further down the first page of the article: "Moderator Simon Phipps began by welcoming some new faces at the table and arching his eyebrows in surprise at the one big no-show this year: IBM's apparent boycott of JavaOne. Despite IBM's absence, they were not ignored in the ensuing conversation."

Later during the Java Technology Achievement Awards, cosponsored by Sun and Java Pro magazine, Mark Bauhaus, vice-president of Java Web services at Sun, commented on IBM's no-show at this year's JavaOne, despite their wins at the event. Although this line didn't make it in the final report online, I heard him say, "All of the other J2EE players are here with enthusiasm: BEA, Oracle, Borland, you name it. It is too bad that one of our important partners evidently chose not to participate."

The report on that event is here:
http://www.ftponline.com/reports/javaone/2003/awar ds/