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VB6 is simple, but there is a surprisingly large amount of power to be tapped from it, if you understand the underlying infrastructure.

Having done some hard core COM programming 10 years ago, for a Computer Based Testing "test driver", our team learned we could spend 2 days to get up a "ActiveDoc" in C++ using ATL, and WTL, or we could do the same thing in VB6 within an hour. Considering how fast it was to implement ActiveDocument and custom COM interfaces, I changed my mind on how weak I perceived VB6 was. (Unfortunately many of the VB trained, customer-based implementors of our interface were not as astute, and even in a VB6 environment didn't understand what they needed to do to create a component that would properly talk to the rest of our system.)

Still, knowing how quickly VB6 would let one get up an interface, I was able to help a room mate of mine create a level editor for our own rolled version of Zelda. It was a little cumbersome to learn how to read individual bytes of the palette based sprite files, but VB6 had all the power there.

All that said, VB6 should die IMHO. After (C# / VB).NET came out, it became a lot easier to make object dynamically talk to each other and perform byte level manipulation.

The demo "Node" and it's associated source code is available here:
www.tronster.com/code/node

This was made by 2 programmers (me being one) and an artist/musician. It's not technically spectacular, but it was made to run on Linux and Windows, and ranked 3rd place at the Coma 2 demo competition.

The demo scene is a fantastically creative place to be. In middle school (][gs) and high school (PC), my friends and I would be the first to DL the latest demos from the European compos. It wasn't until college I obtained the discipline to put something out. Wish I had the time to do another one.

By now I've performed about 80-100 tech interviews for a variety of IT companies. I will ask the brain dead questions, but ramp up accordingly. I essentially want to ask just enough to know whether or not I can say with confidence "HIRE" or "NO HIRE". ( Recommend reading: Joel On Software )

If relevant, I will ask for some white-boarding of UML, or a code fragment to perform a simple task.

I do all of this because, I have found that age means nothing. I've worked with some seasoned geeks who taught my colleagues and I alot on the latest technologies. I've also worked with a guy I hired who had well over 20 years experiences and was absolutely useless. I can personally say the same to guys just a few years in the field.

It's a crap shoot...and I don't like to gamble.

Another way I look at it... I've also been on the receiving end of an interview at least a dozen times. When this happens I try to show my patience when going through the brain-dead questions, because I know acting rushed or anxious is a sure way to send bad mojo to the interviewer, even if I've nailed all the tech questions.

I know I'm interviewing for a good contract when the interview switches to more challenging questions based on my answers. If the interviewer just runs through the list or makes self-contradictory statements, there is a good chance it's either a manager who doesn't know the subject matter or possibly a technie called in to give the interview and isn't good at it. At which point, it can be a fun challenge to turn up the charm with the interview, because I know the questions coming are no sweat. The degree of confidence shows leadership skills and does stick in their mind when making decisions. (Especially if the interviewer WAS a non-technie.)

P.S.: Also regarding semantically incorrect or self-contradictory statements... I sometimes deliberately throw out a misstatement to see how the interviewee responds (if at all).

--
Help me find 3 kidnapped children!
Cheers.

My current situation: http://www.tronster.com/missing/

My friend's 3 kids was "kidnapped" yesterday by their father here in Baltimore, their location is unknown.

After a 4 day custody trial, which ended Friday, he was orded to turn them over at a Police station at 8pm on 8/18/06. He neve showed.

I've spent the day riding with her to and from multiple Police stations as well as the Towson commissioner's office. Everywhere we go we hear the same thing, "Without a bench warrant our hands are tied."

Today I learned 2 things:

1. It's nearly impossible to get a hold of a judge on a Saturday
2. Commissioner's can be downright cruel and unhelpful

While working with the Baltimore police, most all have been very friendly (many have agreed with us about Commissioner's!) but none of them are able to do more than write down what we say. We're quickly losing hope; and even if an amber alert goes out... it may be too late if he has left the country. I have almost no faith in the Baltimore legal system and how it interacts with the police is non-existant. (Note: I blame this interaction between the two, not the Police themselves.)

Regardless, I wanted to tred on the border of being on topic as the Baltimore police and their inability to act on this may cause us to lose 3 children to an unstable man. If any Slashdoter's have 5 seconds, please click on the web-page below I made, and let me know if you see him or the kids.

With luck and more leg work, we'll get the amber alert up ASAP.

http://www.tronster.com/missing/

My current situation: http://www.tronster.com/missing/

My friend's 3 kids was "kidnapped" yesterday by their father here in Baltimore, their location is unknown.

After a 4 day custody trial, which ended Friday, he was orded to turn them over at a Police station at 8pm on 8/18/06. He neve showed.

I've spent the day riding with her to and from multiple Police stations as well as the Towson commissioner's office. Everywhere we go we hear the same thing, "Without a bench warrant our hands are tied."

Today I learned 2 things:

1. It's nearly impossible to get a hold of a judge on a Saturday
2. Commissioner's can be downright cruel and unhelpful

While working with the Baltimore police, most all have been very friendly (many have agreed with us about Commissioner's!) but none of them are able to do more than write down what we say. We're quickly losing hope; and even if an amber alert goes out... it may be too late if he has left the country. I have almost no faith in the Baltimore legal system and how it interacts with the police is non-existant. (Note: I blame this interaction between the two, not the Police themselves.)

Regardless, I wanted to tred on the border of being on topic as the Baltimore police and their inability to act on this may cause us to lose 3 children to an unstable man. If any Slashdoter's have 5 seconds, please click on the web-page below I made, and let me know if you see him or the kids.

With luck and more leg work, we'll get the amber alert up ASAP.

http://www.tronster.com/missing/

I took on the Nehe Open Source Zelda project two years ago. We made much progress (portals from overworld to underworld, most all weapons implemented, etc...) and then we got a letter from Nintendo's lawyers about the graphics. We had lifted them from an emulator (screen shots and Photoshop-action) and so we needed to scrap them.

The project could have continued but that took a significant amount of air out of my sails. I gave the code to a friend at the BaltoLUG who added SDL to it and made it work on Linux. This new project is still up but not being actively developed: Openlynks. Sadely, the level editor was made in Visual Basic 6 and so unlike the C++/OpenGL game engine, it hasn't been ported over.

The remains of the project pages are here.

Oh, and it doesn't matter because the US doesn't allow numbers in names

I don't know if only one game can be considered the best, with there being so many genres. IMHO, Super Mario Brothers 3 does deserve to be named the best side scroller.

Adventure-wise though, I'd go with Zelda. It was RPG, it was action-based, it was both! Add some quality 8-bit music and you have a game you can't put down (for long). Shameless plug for the Open Source Zelda project I'm a part of.

I'll utilize this topic to drum up support for an Open Source game I'm helping to push forward. It's Open Source Zelda and can be found here.

This project was started by Nehe (of famed OpenGL tutorials) and he maintains posting the stable milestone check-ins. Even if you aren't interested in OSZ, check out his site...his tutorials are the best on the web, IMHO.

The idea is to re-create the original 8-bit Zelda which Nintendo released in the mid-80's, but for it to have an open architecture so that other developers may reuse the engine for similar games. The code is also highly OO, and well documented in the hopes that those interested in knowing how to create a game (or apply OO design) can glen some knowledge from other developers' work.

It's Win32 now, but we have had interest from a developer in the BaltoLUG who may begin a Linux port. Anyone is welcome to attempt this, branch it, or do whatever they want with the code (under the GPL). =)

You can spend some time searching through Pricewatch.

I've been doing this for a custom system for a few months now (over half a year) and
this link has what I'm planning on putting together.

It should be good for sound, games, gfx and coding (all which I do.)