Posted on 05/04/2002 11:54:48 AM PDT by Bush2000
Not entirely true, but since you want to use that as an argument:
Who built the first internal combustion engine? Did only the inventor improve on it until now?
How about the first turbine engine?
I still say "Gates-haters" suffer from penis envy.
You stated that Unix had more overhead. It doesn't, either from a hardware standpoint, or an admin standpoint.
Good lord, you really don't see your own bias?
I like .NET, but urge caution on all new tech.
And that's not pro-.NET enough for you. I have the audacity to suggest there are things to be fixed!
You don't see your bias?
Okay, then, I guess I understand a little more than I did when I initiated this conversation. Thank you.
I don't have a "close relationship" with anyone but CSC. I make decisions purely based on technology.
Ya'll all have a "close relationship" with MS, and shout/insult/flame down any criticism of MS as "liberal", etc.
And you don't see your own bias.
I guess I also understand CNN a little better, too.
Dear child, the use of various legal language statements doesn't make one's code "suck" (I can even point to lots of code that fails to use those statements that aren't worth spitting on), nor is it the fault of programmers who use the 60% of VB 6 that is no longer compatible with VB.Net.
One major reason to use the Goto command is in establishing VB 6 error detection and correction routines. For VB.Net the entire error handling system has been forcefully changed, with the old VB 6 method no longer supported BY DESIGN.
I don't like your Blame the Victim mentality. It goes to the heart of why people such as yourself should remain unemployed and bitter.
If the shoe was on the other foot, and Sun came out with a Java compiler or interpreter that didn't support 60% of legacy code from previous versions of Java, you and people with your child-like mindset would be cheering in the streets at how Sun wasn't smart-enough to make a backwards compatible compiler.
Likewise, no one would cheer a new C++ compiler that couldn't compile 60% of existing C++ code, yet that's what you are trying to do when you pretend that it isn't Microsoft's fault that VB.Net will only compile 40% of existing VB 6 code.
Why, if your code wasn't compiled, then it must be your fault, your silly mind blurts out. Your code must suck.
Sigh. Corporate America doesn't need such technical Yes-Men. We've already got too many of those in management.
Oh, and by the way, your claim at the top of this post is balderdash. If you needed to "convert" your 25,000 LOC VB 6 program in order to get the VB.Net environment to accept it, then by definition your code has had changes made to it (in stark contrast to your amatuerish cries that your code didn't need "changes").
In any Mission Critical environment running any formal testing methodology, those changes alone (in the conversion) would mandate full-scale system-level re-testing.
You mistook knowing that fixes will always be part of development with knowing there are problems to begin with. As a developer, you cannot possibly state that you code is perfect, only that you produce code without known problems. I do. Microsoft does, most of the time, and Sun does, most of the time. the business end is time to market. Of course, sloppy delivery will mean no support in the community.
A number of studies have concluded that UNIX requires 2-3 times the admin support costs, and you cannot possibly think that UNIX servers and the UNIX environmentis not far more costly. Of course, Linux has changed the scene, such that low end print and web servers are next to nothing in cost, but Linux isn't figured in the historical costs on UNIX.
Your continuing narcissistic use of "child", and your continuing references that you are the older, wiser person among us really don't do much for your credibility, considering that you are neither.
Now for a lesson in reality. Visual Basic .NET is a NEW Visual Basic. Perhaps Microsoft could have called it another name, but, once again, let us educate you, dear "child". See, many things in life are given names for marketing purposes that are the same for prior, and accepted, products. Cars are a good example. Does the 1972 Nova really have interchangeable parts with the 1986 Nova? Nope. The latter is a Toyota product. Visual basic .NET shares many traits with Visual basic 6.0 more than it doesn't. Even ADO.NET is not compatible with ADO 2.7, but they share significant similarities.
There are far better reasons to continue the naming of a product more than there are to change it. There are business reasons that trump your personal, and ignorant, technical desires. grow up.
Sadly, your post was a complete non-sequitur. No one was arguing about the name.
What started my posts on this thread was that I responded to someone who claimed that VB.Net was backwards compatible.
You took issue with my response and claimed that it was my VB 6 code that sucked, rather than a compatibility issue. You went on to cite your own 25,000 LOC VB 6 program that "converted" easily to VB.Net.
But both you and the original poster are in error. VB.Net is NOT backwards compatible with VB 6. Conversions don't qualify as backwards compatibility, contrary to your uninformed cries to the contrary. The forms properties in VB 6 are not 100% supported by VB.Net. Various language commands in VB 6 are not supported in VB.Net.
Note that I did not say that VB.Net was bad, only that it was not backwards compatible with VB 6.
And that has nothing to do with a name change or your program successfully "converting," as any serious programmer will tell you.
Perhaps if you were able to pay more attention to what was said, you'd be taken more seriously yourself.
You seem to like that phrase. Unfortunately, it is NOT Microsoft's proprietary language in its entirety. Microsoft submitted C# to ECMA and is now ECMA-334.
As Harr stated in a thread last month, let's wait a year and see who is actually using .NET and what its growth has been. We know the use and growth of Java, C++, VB, and ASP because they have been around at least five years. To say that .NET and C# are dead would be clairvoyant, and I don't think any of us is that good. Hell, there were plenty of people putting down Java when I picked it up, and loved it, who said Java was a toy like Visual Basic. Yes, it was at first, but it was a server toy and nice change from client side computing and server side C++ services!
My predictions, what they are worth, are that it will be a typical industry split; 40% to .NET or Java and 60% to the other. They will find their niche markets and the other will have a hard time competing in that market. The companies, Microsoft and Sun, will not be friendly and the developers will be just as bad. The industry will tire of us and decide for itself. Our word will seem to be biased, making the selling of the project hard. Some companies and projects will pick their technology and do very well, while the rest will bicker and fail.
My choice; I will concentrate on .NET while my peer will concentrate on J2EE. We will work together to sell the right solution, and part of that will be the client's personal choice. We will present costs and capabilities, and chose the solution we will present based on actual facts and the needs of our clients. My prediction is that .NET will work best, at the best cost, at least 90% of the time for new projects and it will be a toss up for existing ones. Anyone who has any experience, and has listened to their clients, knows that they will not dump a $10 million Oracle installation for SQL Server, and likewise. .NET will make its best appearance on new projects where the customer wants a fast development time, cheaper costs, including resources, and desires an integrated solution; one product suite for it all. Of course, the J2EE fellow will argue the same thing. Such is technology.
No, I think it's very clear.
You just mentioned that some 50 people in your company will be moving forward with .NET work. And the bottom line is that .NET is new, and has not been 'shaken out', so there are certainly problems that you don't even know about yet.
So you're selling a solution that *certainly* has issues, without telling the client that you know there will be fixes needed. You're making promises you absolutely can not keep. But by the time the client finds out you can't keep the promises, you'll have already cashed the check and you'll say, "that's just what you should expect, there's always fixes needed in something new. No, Java wouldn't have anywhere as many problems, since it's been heavily tested going on a decade now, but you don't want Java, because now you've spent all this money, and we've locked you into a contract . . ."
I would have said the same thing to anyone planning to use Java for mission-critical work before about the 1.2 release. You see, that's the difference between my "preference" and your "bias". I would not try and sell a customer on using untested technology for critical work. I have no "relationship" with either Sun or MS, my only master is my client. I have no motive to lie to sell anything.
What you're doing, in my experience, is making promises you can't possibly keep to generate revenue.
Then *when* it blows up, as you said to this person, you'll just act like that's life, and likely offer to charge to fix the problems.
I believe this is professional fraud, promising your product can do things it can't. Which, I believe, is why MS has never made any serious inroads into the server side. And likely still won't.
Finding people to pay you to try out new, untested things that you don't even know if it will work is going to be very hard.
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