Screw that, it's called a learning experience, next time take a FT job, not a contract.
One potential problem (and this is becoming popular based on my experience) is that many companies are not hiring fulltime anymore...only wanting the contractors so that they don't have to pay benefits.
Anyway, this sucks...if they wanted to be direct employees...do that.
A company I left never offered that as an option..yet have had contractors doing the same thing as regular employees. The only difference was that they were always set home at 40 hours, because they didn't want to pay overtime.
Contracting should be a temporary thing...but some companys hire contractors to avoid paying benefits, but also want to keep the contractor indefinatly. I don't find that to be the right thing to do.
What ended up happening at the company I left was that they basically stopped hiring anyone (except management) full time so they could 'fire' the contractors if there was a short lule.
As another poster pointed out, use the 'cash back' feature of grocery store / drug store registers. You'll have to buy a pack of gum...but at lesat you're getting someting for that 1.50 instead of giving it to a bank for the privledge of gettng your money out.
Wrong. Banks are allowed to ask for it; they have legitimate tax needs to do so. They need to send you a 1099-int for your interest income, just likeyour employer needs your SSN to send you a W2.
We WANT our law enforcement officials to be as efficient and work as well as possible (within the law) in enforcing the laws - REGARDLESS of whether we approve of those laws!
Speak for yourself. I for one would rather police not enforce stupid laws that people disapprove of. Just as civilians can exersise civil disobediance, so should law enforcement be able to.
'I was only following orders' does not excuse police (or army for that matter).
Why do you assume its the DMV worker that would abuses it? Once its in the system, your friendly politician who you speak out against can get that info and possibly use it against you.
So you'd be for cameras in every house too because it might help solve just one crime right? Why not..thats what your logic leads to.
If you had bothered to RTFA, you'd know that out of 18 DNA-drag nets, only ONE actually helped collar someone...and it was limited to 25 people that had access to the victim. The rest (where thousands of samples were collected) DID NOT HELP AT ALL.
I have now been deprived the income I would have made from that sale.
You wrongly assume that a developer interested in the functionality you are selling would buy it rather then code it themselves.
Just like in the music world; if people MUST pay to listen to something and thats the ONLY way to hear it, alot of people would just opt not to hear it. How is that a lost sale?
This 'new scheme' has been here for a while as well...its called making 'debit' purchase (as opposed to credit). These purchases run through different networks other then VISA or MC.
Its more secure, but you also don't have the protection of visa should your card be stolen.
Also, reading the pin from the card is trivially easy...if they are encrypted at all, I think its via DES.. anyone else have more info?
How do you hire a Java programmer when everyone has their own custom JVM to work with? Businesses don't wnat to do that either, less thier programmers become excessively valuable.
No, why should I "face it" and "move on" when the system works? Businesses invest in software to do a job. If the job is done, then it's done - tech improvements don't necessarily mean the job will be done any better.
Because business is not stagnent? Because the system that 'does the job' today might not be able to do that jobs of tomorrow? Because there comes a point where its more expensive to maintain the older software then upgrade it?
But they're not necessarily in the interest of the businesses. Many of the businesses who signed the petition to Microsoft to continue VB6 realize that. It's developers who need to "face it": software is produced for business purposes, not the other way around.
Its not in their intrest to stagnat though either. Its not in their intrest to continue to invest in a technology whose time has past and who's many flaws are showing..Net is a step up, it should make it harder to repeat the mistakes that are so common even today with VB6. Meaning that there should be fewer bugs and quicker development time to add new features. Or are those unimportant?
I currently use a 25 year old mainframe application. It isn't very nice, it really is showing it's age, but it does what the business wants a great deal better than a Windows 2003 application would do even if they were willing to spend the money to completely rewrite it.
Are you so sure about that? I have a feeling that the business doesn't know how much better / more automated things could be if they moved to newer software.
Software to me is similar to cars; there comes a point where you'd save more money buy buying a new (or newer) car than you could by fixing your current car all the time.
IBM mainframes still pretty much support software from 30 years ago. Why? Because there'd be trouble from the huge organisations that rely on such software. Longhorn is going to have serious sales problems if it doesn't support VB6 given the millions or maybe billions of lines of VB6 in use.
And those companies that refuse to invest in newer technology will be eaten by those that are willing to. This is 2005, there's no reason that checks or credit card purchases or EFT transfers should ever take more then a few seconds.
There's no reason to have your life in jepordy because your medical records and locked in an office over the weekend and the ER doesn't know about the most recent stuff. We don't need RF implants to solve this problem, hospitals just need to remove that paper they rely on.
My point is that companies that rely on mainframes that can only process transactions at 80s speeds will be killed by those that can process 100s more on a standard desktop. A company that enables B2B over say web services will probably be alot more competive than one that still mails out paper forms.
There is too much monitary incentive for them not to persue it
Theh problem is the online ad industry created such hatred for themselves that people blocked it...and advertisers know this, and AREN'T willing to pay much for onine ads. So I don't think there is alot of monitary incentive...i think this industry shoot itself in teh foot too early on.
I started blocking ads when they wereonly a little annoying, after i found that loading from sits like doubleclick were also doing data mining, and also made pages three times longer to load.
Ads are still some of the last things to load..which is partly why I continue to block them.
I took the OPs meaning that Mozilla had somehow invented PNG.
Understood, but I think that was the wrong way to take it.
Mozilla had no interest in creating unobtrusive popup blocker notification cues until they saw the one that shipped with XPSP2. Funny how that works, eh?
Huh? FF had popup blocking well before SP2... Mozilla might not have, but FF certainly did.
No, it's not irrelevant for the simple reason that I was talking about innovation. Popularity != innovation.
I'd argue that unless your 'innovation' gains popularity, you did something wrong innovating it. What good does it do if no one knows about it?
But bugs aren't part of the interface being a contract.
while that programmer worked around it, he should have also anticipated that the bug may eventually be fixed....and have code to check if the workaround is needed.
You should NEVER rely on a bug being in components outside your control. If possible you should get on the component maker to fix and ship a fixed version of the component to you...at teh very least you can 'test' of the bug is there or not...and work around it only if you find its not fixed.
1. It is faster to develop an application in VB than any other Language Microsoft has built in a number of wizards to make building complete application templates with a few clicks. I have built (and sold) many applications which took less than 4 hours to develop - these include a webbrowser, email client, contacts database, file searching tools and a image viewer.
Bah. Its easy to develop a web browser if you reference the 'web browser' ocx control. Same goes for the rest. Speed of development is an overrated attribute. I'm sure you're slapped together VB code can't be easiler enhanced either.
2. Visual Basic is more secure as a language There are NO pointers to worry about and all low level stuff is handled by the windows VBRUN.DLL's. This makes VB applications MORE secure than any other application, because it is physically impossible to get buffer overruns (the cause of 98% of all security problems)
You can get the same benefits in C#. Or Java.
3. You earn more money using VB Face it - as much as we all like using Linux, there simply are not that many jobs available for C/Linux coders. Most of the jobs are for large corps or government and they almost always go with Visual Basic for the client and Java for the servers.
Huh? I've seen lots more jobs in C / C++ (not necessarly linux). Its either that or VBScript (for web apps) or lots of.net jobs today too. I've seen very few that want just VB..or even mention vb. and I just finished a job search.
You shouldnt ignore Visual Basic as a language, and it definitely doesnt make VB coders any less skilled than C coders - if anything, I think we are a little stronger, as we have the courage to admit that we like this 'toy language'
Good programmers can write good code in vb. Its tougher then other languages, b/c vb knee-caps you along the way. however, there's a large portion of 'vb only' programmers that rapidly produce exteremely crappy code...that vb likes to make so easy.
Honestly, it shouldn't be easy to be a programmer, you should have to know what you're doing...vb removes that requirement, to the detriment of software development everywhere. Again, just because you can slap together a program quickly doesn't mean you should.
Whats lacking from software development is the reconition that its actually engineering. Once development firms realize that (and their clients realize engineering is expensive) then we'll have less crap software.
VB programmers don't want to move away from VB b/c its all they know. Once they move to vb.net (which is jus a wordy C#) their boss may realize they realliy don't know OOP at all. VB programmers don't like VB.net because they aren't realliy programmers...they speak a sort of english language that will do stuff but certainly isn't put together the right way.
They ask for more because the click to download for.net is relatively new.
Java WebStart probably didn't take off because running Java apps on the desktop never took off.
You can't build a web app that's as good as 90% of Win32 apps (or linux apps) because you can't build an enterprise level system on top of a scripting language. It just doesn't work out...in the end you're left with huge amounts of scripts that you can't even be sure don't have object type problems.
Thick clients got to be a problem because rollout of said apps got to be a problem; now that.net takes you back to xcopy install and allows for auto installation of updates, I think we'll be seeing more desktop apps.
Of course the ideal is keeping one copy of the client on a server and simply sending the display to the desktop (ala Xwin). You get the benefit of having to only worry about one machine to install updates to, just like the web, and have the rich client app that users want.
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Screw that, it's called a learning experience, next time take a FT job, not a contract.
One potential problem (and this is becoming popular based on my experience) is that many companies are not hiring fulltime anymore...only wanting the contractors so that they don't have to pay benefits.
Anyway, this sucks...if they wanted to be direct employees...do that.
A company I left never offered that as an option..yet have had contractors doing the same thing as regular employees. The only difference was that they were always set home at 40 hours, because they didn't want to pay overtime.
Contracting should be a temporary thing...but some companys hire contractors to avoid paying benefits, but also want to keep the contractor indefinatly. I don't find that to be the right thing to do.
What ended up happening at the company I left was that they basically stopped hiring anyone (except management) full time so they could 'fire' the contractors if there was a short lule.
Please explain how its a bullshit arguement. Its not possible that someone would put effort into downloading but not be willing to pay for it?
Just because someone isn't willing to buy doesn't mean they aren't willing to use it for free. Hence, its not a lost sale.
As another poster pointed out, use the 'cash back' feature of grocery store / drug store registers. You'll have to buy a pack of gum...but at lesat you're getting someting for that 1.50 instead of giving it to a bank for the privledge of gettng your money out.
Wrong. Banks are allowed to ask for it; they have legitimate tax needs to do so. They need to send you a 1099-int for your interest income, just likeyour employer needs your SSN to send you a W2.
We WANT our law enforcement officials to be as efficient and work as well as possible (within the law) in enforcing the laws - REGARDLESS of whether we approve of those laws!
Speak for yourself. I for one would rather police not enforce stupid laws that people disapprove of. Just as civilians can exersise civil disobediance, so should law enforcement be able to.
'I was only following orders' does not excuse police (or army for that matter).
Why do you assume its the DMV worker that would abuses it? Once its in the system, your friendly politician who you speak out against can get that info and possibly use it against you.
Maybe to protect yourself against the government should it decide to throw out the constitution?
So you'd be for cameras in every house too because it might help solve just one crime right? Why not..thats what your logic leads to.
If you had bothered to RTFA, you'd know that out of 18 DNA-drag nets, only ONE actually helped collar someone...and it was limited to 25 people that had access to the victim. The rest (where thousands of samples were collected) DID NOT HELP AT ALL.
So, whats the point?
Thats the WORST thing you can do...as they police will immediately fixate on you as their prime suspect.
In the real world, no good deed goes unpunished.
I have now been deprived the income I would have made from that sale.
You wrongly assume that a developer interested in the functionality you are selling would buy it rather then code it themselves.
Just like in the music world; if people MUST pay to listen to something and thats the ONLY way to hear it, alot of people would just opt not to hear it. How is that a lost sale?
Again, try a credit union over a bank. You'll be pleasently suprised.
This 'new scheme' has been here for a while as well...its called making 'debit' purchase (as opposed to credit). These purchases run through different networks other then VISA or MC.
Its more secure, but you also don't have the protection of visa should your card be stolen.
Also, reading the pin from the card is trivially easy...if they are encrypted at all, I think its via DES.. anyone else have more info?
Which of course may be a problem itself too.
How do you hire a Java programmer when everyone has their own custom JVM to work with? Businesses don't wnat to do that either, less thier programmers become excessively valuable.
No, why should I "face it" and "move on" when the system works? Businesses invest in software to do a job. If the job is done, then it's done - tech improvements don't necessarily mean the job will be done any better.
.Net is a step up, it should make it harder to repeat the mistakes that are so common even today with VB6. Meaning that there should be fewer bugs and quicker development time to add new features. Or are those unimportant?
Because business is not stagnent? Because the system that 'does the job' today might not be able to do that jobs of tomorrow? Because there comes a point where its more expensive to maintain the older software then upgrade it?
But they're not necessarily in the interest of the businesses. Many of the businesses who signed the petition to Microsoft to continue VB6 realize that. It's developers who need to "face it": software is produced for business purposes, not the other way around.
Its not in their intrest to stagnat though either. Its not in their intrest to continue to invest in a technology whose time has past and who's many flaws are showing.
I currently use a 25 year old mainframe application. It isn't very nice, it really is showing it's age, but it does what the business wants a great deal better than a Windows 2003 application would do even if they were willing to spend the money to completely rewrite it.
Are you so sure about that? I have a feeling that the business doesn't know how much better / more automated things could be if they moved to newer software.
Software to me is similar to cars; there comes a point where you'd save more money buy buying a new (or newer) car than you could by fixing your current car all the time.
IBM mainframes still pretty much support software from 30 years ago. Why? Because there'd be trouble from the huge organisations that rely on such software. Longhorn is going to have serious sales problems if it doesn't support VB6 given the millions or maybe billions of lines of VB6 in use.
And those companies that refuse to invest in newer technology will be eaten by those that are willing to. This is 2005, there's no reason that checks or credit card purchases or EFT transfers should ever take more then a few seconds.
There's no reason to have your life in jepordy because your medical records and locked in an office over the weekend and the ER doesn't know about the most recent stuff. We don't need RF implants to solve this problem, hospitals just need to remove that paper they rely on.
My point is that companies that rely on mainframes that can only process transactions at 80s speeds will be killed by those that can process 100s more on a standard desktop. A company that enables B2B over say web services will probably be alot more competive than one that still mails out paper forms.
There is too much monitary incentive for them not to persue it
Theh problem is the online ad industry created such hatred for themselves that people blocked it...and advertisers know this, and AREN'T willing to pay much for onine ads. So I don't think there is alot of monitary incentive...i think this industry shoot itself in teh foot too early on.
I started blocking ads when they wereonly a little annoying, after i found that loading from sits like doubleclick were also doing data mining, and also made pages three times longer to load.
Ads are still some of the last things to load..which is partly why I continue to block them.
I took the OPs meaning that Mozilla had somehow invented PNG.
Understood, but I think that was the wrong way to take it.
Mozilla had no interest in creating unobtrusive popup blocker notification cues until they saw the one that shipped with XPSP2. Funny how that works, eh?
Huh? FF had popup blocking well before SP2... Mozilla might not have, but FF certainly did.
No, it's not irrelevant for the simple reason that I was talking about innovation. Popularity != innovation.
I'd argue that unless your 'innovation' gains popularity, you did something wrong innovating it. What good does it do if no one knows about it?
But bugs aren't part of the interface being a contract.
while that programmer worked around it, he should have also anticipated that the bug may eventually be fixed....and have code to check if the workaround is needed.
You should NEVER rely on a bug being in components outside your control. If possible you should get on the component maker to fix and ship a fixed version of the component to you...at teh very least you can 'test' of the bug is there or not...and work around it only if you find its not fixed.
1. It is faster to develop an application in VB than any other Language
.net jobs today too. I've seen very few that want just VB..or even mention vb. and I just finished a job search.
Microsoft has built in a number of wizards to make building complete application templates with a few clicks. I have built (and sold) many applications which took less than 4 hours to develop - these include a webbrowser, email client, contacts database, file searching tools and a image viewer.
Bah. Its easy to develop a web browser if you reference the 'web browser' ocx control. Same goes for the rest. Speed of development is an overrated attribute. I'm sure you're slapped together VB code can't be easiler enhanced either.
2. Visual Basic is more secure as a language
There are NO pointers to worry about and all low level stuff is handled by the windows VBRUN.DLL's. This makes VB applications MORE secure than any other application, because it is physically impossible to get buffer overruns (the cause of 98% of all security problems)
You can get the same benefits in C#. Or Java.
3. You earn more money using VB
Face it - as much as we all like using Linux, there simply are not that many jobs available for C/Linux coders. Most of the jobs are for large corps or government and they almost always go with Visual Basic for the client and Java for the servers.
Huh? I've seen lots more jobs in C / C++ (not necessarly linux). Its either that or VBScript (for web apps) or lots of
You shouldnt ignore Visual Basic as a language, and it definitely doesnt make VB coders any less skilled than C coders - if anything, I think we are a little stronger, as we have the courage to admit that we like this 'toy language'
Good programmers can write good code in vb. Its tougher then other languages, b/c vb knee-caps you along the way. however, there's a large portion of 'vb only' programmers that rapidly produce exteremely crappy code...that vb likes to make so easy.
Honestly, it shouldn't be easy to be a programmer, you should have to know what you're doing...vb removes that requirement, to the detriment of software development everywhere. Again, just because you can slap together a program quickly doesn't mean you should.
Whats lacking from software development is the reconition that its actually engineering. Once development firms realize that (and their clients realize engineering is expensive) then we'll have less crap software.
As others pointed out, they can still continue to run thier old crap..
.net offers alot more then VB6 ever could.
But lets face it..at some point you need to move on, even if it costs money.
Would you suggest that no one should move from 1.0 kernel of linux?
The fact is that
BUt no, they don't have to redevelop it, they can continue as is...but if any more bugs are found, they'll just have to work around it.
VB programmers don't want to move away from VB b/c its all they know. Once they move to vb.net (which is jus a wordy C#) their boss may realize they realliy don't know OOP at all. VB programmers don't like VB.net because they aren't realliy programmers...they speak a sort of english language that will do stuff but certainly isn't put together the right way.
Well they released SP7 just last year...
Personally I think VB6's time was up years ago...its really limiting in what you can do, and its certainly showing its age.
They ask for more because the click to download for .net is relatively new.
.net takes you back to xcopy install and allows for auto installation of updates, I think we'll be seeing more desktop apps.
Java WebStart probably didn't take off because running Java apps on the desktop never took off.
You can't build a web app that's as good as 90% of Win32 apps (or linux apps) because you can't build an enterprise level system on top of a scripting language. It just doesn't work out...in the end you're left with huge amounts of scripts that you can't even be sure don't have object type problems.
Thick clients got to be a problem because rollout of said apps got to be a problem; now that
Of course the ideal is keeping one copy of the client on a server and simply sending the display to the desktop (ala Xwin). You get the benefit of having to only worry about one machine to install updates to, just like the web, and have the rich client app that users want.
I've made my 4+ year career doing web developement and making things work in both IE and NS or Safari.