Visual Basic book author gives up the language 177
Norman Lorrain writes "Bruce McKinney, author of of Hardcore Visual Basic
has announced
that he's fed up with VB and won't be writing a 3rd edition of
his book. The best quote is at the end: "I don't need a
language designed by a focus group"."
Good for what it was designed to do (Score:1)
-- Just Another Anonymous Coward
Object Oriented? (Score:1)
Don't all object oriented langes have to support, inheritence, polymorphism/dynamic binding object construction and destruction and other good stuff?
VB is not a OO language, it is wannabe oo language just like the programmers of vb are wannabe programmers.
As a VB programmer... (Score:1)
The only disagreement I have with what this guy says is that I never regarded VB as a language -- it's a product.
Next week I'm leaving VB behind (forever I hope!) and switching to Delphi. Those sacrifices I made to the gods must have worked... although finding the willing virgins was quite difficult.
Expecting Too Much from VB: One Tool Mistake (Score:1)
Reminds me of the old saying:
If all you have is a hammer then all the world is a nail.
Everyone seems to have to relearn this idea.
Peace
Ron Rangel
ATT (Score:1)
Yes. When ATT had a monopoly on the phone system,
people complained about their arrogance, but most of us were
generally happy with the service. The phone system never
went down, and the phones that they rented were over-
engineered to last forever.
Plus, if you did have ANY problems, they'd come out to
your house and fix them for free.
Some people are a little slow (Score:1)
He is of course correct about the documentation as well.
Delphi is the way to go for RAD developement for a windows only platform.
Good trash (Score:1)
It's easy to compare it to C++, Java, MFC, GTK+, etc.. but that isn't what VB was supposed to be. Delphi, VB, Visualage Smalltalk, etc.. are bread and butter application generators for big businesses. They allow you to build a GUI front end for accessing a database or something in remarkably small amounts of time with remarkably small amounts of skill, and that is a good thing. There needs to be tools like that. They are primarily used for one-time use disposable code or on internal projects. The problem is when you start losing sight of what VB really is, of course it isn't good for large applications.
MS came dangerously close to hitting the nail on the head with VB, though. The idea is there, they just started delivering a shoddy product after a few revisions and never beefed it up enough to be what they claimed it was which is funny with BG's committment to BASIC. If they had made VB as good as its competitors and had the same userbase we'd have some project going on to copy it before big businesses even looked at linux.
the problem with VB.. (Score:1)
but if microsoft suddenly decides they don't like VB anymore, and decide to "stop supporting" it, or replace it with something they like better, like IE 7.0, VB is dead. Anyone who's made a living off of it no longer has any meaningful skills, since VB is the only basic language worth mentioning on any system.
and microsoft is the sort of company who is likely to turn around tomorrow and professionally kill off a thousand clueless professional VB programmers.
anyway,
VB == Hypercard + color + legitimacy
Delphi is so superior is laughable (Score:1)
Delphi:
(1) Single executable! installation of VB
runtime and OCXes is a major problem.
Can't count the number of OCX installation
problems. Common OCXes being overwritten, etc.
(2) Free and reasonably high quality VCLs are
available because inheritance in Delphi is
used for components much more than VB.
Re-implementing methods and procedures in vcls
is a snap. VCLs can be used with C++ Builder.
Does Linux have anything better? (Score:1)
Yes, I know we have emacs, or the Unix philosophy of small tools doing small things in combination, etc. and a lot of other things (transparency, access to system source code, etc.) -- but we all know the downsides of this environment too -- the long and difficult learning curve Unix programmers have to go through to become even marginally productive.
So we still need to ask : Can Linux offer something better?
Just like COM... (Score:1)
(By the way, the important letter in COM is not 'O', but rather 'C' for Component -- see below.)
COM *has* inheritance, the good kind, interface inheritance, good for composing robust and evolvable systems from separately authored components.
Implementation inheritance, on the other hand, the bad kind, leads to subtle dependences from derived classes upon their base classes, such that it is very difficult to correctly version the base classes. Sometimes called the brittle base class problem. Implementation inheritance is fine if you're simply writing the entirety of a 10,000 line utility, *and* if your class library vendor has sworn up and down they'll never change its implementation, but is deadly if you're writing a piece of a 100,000 line application or trying to implement version 3 of the latter.
Another problem with implementation inheritance is that each language has its own subclassing and naming semantics, so in practice you are locked into one programming language. COM is nice and language neutral -- write in C++, C, Java, VB, COBOL, etc.
A nice balanced (OMG, COM, Java) book about the concepts of component software and how it builds on OOP but delivers new benefits when building large applications from reusable components, is "Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming" by Clemens Szyperski, (Addison-Wesley).
Give it a look.
Qt and KDevelop will be as good for that (Score:1)
For the moment, i'd suggest you take a look at Qt and QtArchitect [primenet.com] ot try PerlQt. With a little bit of knowledge of object oriented concepts (which you should have anyway) it is possible to write little programs *really* fast!
And, you won't be locked into a crappy design if you want to enlarge them.
For beginners... (Score:1)
C-based, poorly documented, and crazy for features, this is more of a geek tk.
Either take some small XForms-like toolkit like fltk (as the aboe poster mentioned), or take QT, if you want to do real work.
If anything, Qt can be an alternative for the usual VB programmer. Nice tutorial, clear structure, commercial vendor to throw money at (deep desire due to M$ assimilation
PerlQt is cool, BasicQt would be as well, if there was a decent BASIC (contradiction?) on UNIX.
My VB story! (Score:1)
This is one case where I'm glad AC exists. :) If I told this story using my real name, I'd get fired pretty quickly...
A couple of years ago I went to work for a consulting company. I wasn't impressed with the techies there, but hey, it's a job. I was called in to do a web-based version of a Visual Basic program.
The program had about 50 screens. I discovered that the Big Boss himself had written the VB program. I was surprised, as I had pegged him as a PHB windbag. I was very impressed up until I watched him coding.
For anyone who's seen VB "programmers" in action, I don't have to tell you what a travesty the environment is. Click here, fill in some properties there, write five lines of code. That's a form! This is swell if you're just writing a single-form program, but the project he was working on very quickly became unmaintainable.
He is a very sloppy coder. It took him three months to get it "just right", half a dozen buggy releases, hijacking the customers as beta-testers. If I were a manager, and someone like that were working for me, I would fire him. I guess the customers had been conditioned to expect this sort of thing in "software development", though.
Anyway, I wrote the web-based version in two days. I was instructed to make it look good under the constraint that it had to work on Navigator 3.0+, and MSIE 3.0+; and it had to download in less than a minute on a 28.8K modem. As it was a highly data-driven program, I wrote about 20K of JavaScript code that automatically generated the rest of the pages; the page downloaded in 5 seconds at 28.8K.
There was only one revision. The customer got in a conference call with me and my boss to discuss a couple of user-interface issues. I fixed the web pages during the call. The customer was very impressed. The boss was dazed.
The ironic part is that my boss is a respected Visual Basic "expert". If this is the caliber of programmer who works with Visual Basic, I do not consider VB'ers to be programmers.
BTW, I have skimmed through a famous VB book since then, and all I remember about it was that it was replete with errors and inefficiencies that clearly indicated the author didn't understand logic or modular programming.
garbage-collection, destructors, java (Score:1)
umm . . . java has garbage collection, which does destroy things, but for that very reason it doesn't have destructors in the c++ sense (c++ is the only OO language i know well other than ObjectPascal; i know java a bit). a destructor is a function which is called when a class instance is destroyed. f'rinstance, this is very handy for getting rid of any dynamically allocated storage that the object may have lying around. of course, in a garbage-collected language, you don't have to worry about that. i'm awfully tired right now, and i honestly can't think of any other necessary uses for destructors (e.g. streaming the object out to a file on destruction is dumb, because sometimes you won't want to store the thing) . . .
oh, yeah: you might want an object to notify somebody that it's dying. another example is the MFC class CWaitCursor; when you instantiate it, all it does is change the mouse pointer to the little hourglass thing. its destructor changes the mouse pointer back to the normal one. so you just declare an instance at the beginning of a long loop, and then forget about it; when that object passes out of scope, the destructor will be called. that's pretty useless, but it's cute and it's another example. in fact, it's a very apposite example, because if that object were garbage collected, it would be destroyed at some point in the future. when? who knows! the implementation has a mind of its own.
a garbage-collected language with destructors would wander along, doing its thing, and then suddenly decide to collect some garbage -- whereupon this whole raft of arbitrary functions would start getting called. with garbage collection (at least as it's implemented in java), the programmer has no control over when destructors will be called, because the programmer has no control over when objects will be destroyed. therefore in such a language destructors are useless at best, and most likely actively harmful.
i don't think that you need destructors to be an OO language anyway. i'm a lot more entranced by inheritance and abstraction.
all corrections welcome! if i'm wrong i'd much rather learn than get all resentful.
No Subject Given (Score:1)
I was stuck learning VB for school, and what a pain it was, sure it's easy, but it screwed me up for when I started doing C and GTK..
It's almost as if VB is there to block your state of mind: you are now stuck in MS mode. exit loop is irrelevant, you will be assimilated.
Re: COBOL (was: Java...) (Score:1)
ADD A TO B RESULTING IN C
Being a math/CS major, I was insulted (what's so hard about c=a+b in ?) and soon figured I could con other people to giving the assignments to me in exchange for C/C++ homework and the like.
GTK+ is pretty well documented. (Score:1)
use VC++ 6.0? (Score:1)
mmmmm hmmmmmm (Score:1)
Pico, jed to name a couple. The sequences to exit are right there at the bottom. Not to mention the wide array of X editors, where it's as simple as File->Exit or something similar. Vi and the like were made by programmers to help them do geeky things. Because they do these geeky things, they aren't always so adept at typing an email or something other people do. So, use the right tool for the job.
Why should I have to learn a bunch of esoteric commands to do even basic file management? (pick any shell, or any CLI at all for that matter)
Again, X apps. KDE (and GNOME I guess, haven't gotten around to using it myself) have all the file management things to make it as simple as drag/drop.
Why should I have to use three buttons on a mouse to do functions which can be performed with only one, or two at the most?
Why only use two when there's three on the mouse? And who on earth can't double-click (what most Win mouse drivers use the middle button for)? It's been a while since I used xfig, but I'm sure there's other programs that do it better.
Why should I have to search for hidden menus which should be right in plain view? (Gimp)
Gimp isn't at all a marvel of user-interface design. It's good at what it does, but the UI is lacking. But not every program is like that. Here I sit in Netscape, things are quite straight forward. And along the lines of the first question above, Gimp is a mighty tool, but if you don't need/want to learn it, find something simpler.
Why should I have to completely recompile almost every single piece of software I download from the Internet, rather than have at least a stock installation possible in something I can use right away? (Linux, *BSD, etc.)
I'm building a 486 DX2/66 for my sister. RedHat 5.1 installation went very smoothely. Their X configure thing during the install was as simple as selecting the chipset (though I had to look at the video card to figure that out). After a reboot, I created a user account, did startx and voila, fvwm2 was up and running in X.
On this 400mb hard drive, I've now got X, KDE, etc running quite well. And still 72mb to spare. There's no gcc et al. There are tons of RPMs and the like on sites all over the world, if you do a little looking. It is possible to have a system without compiling anything, but then you lose that bit of control. If you have RedHat and stick with RPMs from their ftps, you probably won't trash too much.
The answer. I shouldn't.
This is the Unix way: the way which makes everything unnecessarily difficult because it keeps the unwashed masses bowing at our feet, begging us to use what we have rendered them unable to. Could anything be more immoral?
You aren't seeing it correctly. Unix was built by prorgammers and geeks to make THEIR lives easier. Things are just now coming around for the average user with KDE/GNOME. But it is because of those geeks that there is a solid foundation of an OS. KDE has a wide variety of applications now that I can give this 486 to my sister so she can play solitaire and email the rest of the family, as well as tons of other things. This is a usable system, and trust me, she won't need to learn vi.
Give it a try again, keeping these points in mind. Or maybe once the 2.2 kernel is out, and KDE 1.1 is available.
mmmmm hmmmmmm (Score:1)
Pico, jed to name a couple. The sequences to exit are right there at the bottom. Not to mention the wide array of X editors, where it's as simple as File->Exit or something similar. Vi and the like were made by programmers to help them do geeky things. Because they do these geeky things, they aren't always so adept at typing an email or something other people do. So, use the right tool for the job.
Why should I have to learn a bunch of esoteric commands to do even basic file management? (pick any shell, or any CLI at all for that matter)
Again, X apps. KDE (and GNOME I guess, haven't gotten around to using it myself) have all the file management things to make it as simple as drag/drop.
Why should I have to use three buttons on a mouse to do functions which can be performed with only one, or two at the most?
Why only use two when there's three on the mouse? And who on earth can't double-click (what most Win mouse drivers use the middle button for)? It's been a while since I used xfig, but I'm sure there's other programs that do it better.
Why should I have to search for hidden menus which should be right in plain view? (Gimp)
Gimp isn't at all a marvel of user-interface design. It's good at what it does, but the UI is lacking. But not every program is like that. Here I sit in Netscape, things are quite straight forward. And along the lines of the first question above, Gimp is a mighty tool, but if you don't need/want to learn it, find something simpler.
Why should I have to completely recompile almost every single piece of software I download from the Internet, rather than have at least a stock installation possible in something I can use right away? (Linux, *BSD, etc.)
I'm building a 486 DX2/66 for my sister. RedHat 5.1 installation went very smoothely. Their X configure thing during the install was as simple as selecting the chipset (though I had to look at the video card to figure that out). After a reboot, I created a user account, did startx and voila, fvwm2 was up and running in X.
On this 400mb hard drive, I've now got X, KDE, etc running quite well. And still 72mb to spare. There's no gcc et al. There are tons of RPMs and the like on sites all over the world, if you do a little looking. It is possible to have a system without compiling anything, but then you lose that bit of control. If you have RedHat and stick with RPMs from their ftps, you probably won't trash too much.
The answer. I shouldn't.
This is the Unix way: the way which makes everything unnecessarily difficult because it keeps the unwashed masses bowing at our feet, begging us to use what we have rendered them unable to. Could anything be more immoral?
You aren't seeing it correctly. Unix was built by prorgammers and geeks to make THEIR lives easier. Things are just now coming around for the average user with KDE/GNOME. But it is because of those geeks that there is a solid foundation of an OS. KDE has a wide variety of applications now that I can give this 486 to my sister so she can play solitaire and email the rest of the family, as well as tons of other things. This is a usable system, and trust me, she won't need to learn vi.
Give it a try again, keeping these points in mind. Or maybe once the 2.2 kernel is out, and KDE 1.1 is available.
mmmmm hmmmmmm (Score:1)
But for GUI apps? (Score:1)
VB (Score:1)
Don't mind the very rich man behind the curtain... (Score:1)
I used to remember when Visual Basic had a lot of promise, then the drugs began wearing off and I remembered it was owned by MicroSloth.
But VB is still an OK enviroment, if you have to use Windows.
Visual C++, and FWIW MFC, are huge and ugly to write even a simple program in. I'll take GTK any day over MFC.
Now come on! (Score:1)
Firewood? no way (Score:1)
We are a product of our environment.... (Score:1)
YOU go read the MFC API specs and then read GTK+. Tell me which is better.
YOU go read Direct3D and then OpenGL.
YOU go read the win32 API docs and then the POSIX spec. Tell me what you prefer.
I've worked with all the Microsoft %@#$ before, and I know what I'm talking about when I say it stinks.
Glade is easy... (Score:1)
GTK+ is pretty well documented. (Score:1)
GTK+ is pretty well documented. (Score:1)
I'm sure they'll have docs on migrating from 1.x to 2.x when it's completed, though.
MSFT's view of programm{ing/ers} is hypocritical (Score:1)
While I was at the Microsoft Professional Developers Summit (Dec. 98) in Minneapolis, MN, during a talk about the (in)security of Windows2000, one of the speakers (whose name and email address is conveniently left out of all materials referring to the conference, though I do have the powerpoint presentations) started ranting about how commercial vendors' software installs
VB (Score:1)
NetMeeting has a lot of potential... But it is DOG SLOW!
FrontPage had great potential from what I hear. But it's been going downhill ever since being purchased from Vermeer.
Java here (Score:1)
Very easy to learn, but you start hitting brick walls REALLY quickly.
Out of the frying pan? (Score:1)
I've seen people program Pascal in C. It doesn't translate exactly, but with a few #defines you can often compile pascal with gcc. (#define END } #define begin {, and so on) The syntax isn't exactly the same, but who cares.
Pascal lacks some minor things that C has, but it is not a toy language. The orginial MacOS was written in Pascal back in 1984, which goes to show that you can write an OS with it. Just because C is the language of the decade doesn't make the other bad.
Perhaps you should learn some languages. Once you learn one you know them all, and the differences are no different then going to a different english speaking area. Enough to slow you down, not enough to be a big deal after a week.
Java... (Score:1)
Re: COBOL (was: Java...) (Score:1)
Oh, and please RTFM before you post. COBOL was first used in the 50s, but it's no more out of date than C or Unix - the last standard was approved in 1985 and there will be another revision in 2000. It's kept pace with the times rather well.
Dijkstra was wrong (Score:1)
I've used a number of different languages (including x86 assembler, C, C++, Java, Pascal, REXX, COBOL) and while COBOL has certain pecularities so does every other language in that list. They all have their own strengths and a smart programmer picks the right language for the job.
hehehe (Score:1)
VB in school?!? (Score:1)
Now they are moving to Java, ewww. The problem
with C as a first language is that strings/pointers are
irrelevant to whatever problem/exercise you are trying
to solve. The problem with Java: you shouldn't start
with OO. Maybe Lisp is the answer.
My problem with VB (Score:2)
I could like with this, I thought. The real problem was that I couldn't find a damn BNF of the language to save my life. The on-line docs didn't help at all, and when I went to my local book superstore, all I could find were books that either like "how to learn programming with VB" or "here is a bunch of man pages on the standard libraries". To this day, I'm still not sure how the syntax of VB really works.
Nevertheless, it *is* nice to drag 'n drop GUI components on a form, and then edit properties of the components with immediate visual feedback. So there's something. But I couldn't figure out how to do any useful computations behind the UI code.
I say give me Tcl or Python or Perl or Lisp as a RAD language anytime over VB. I think it's ironic that I had an easier time learning each of those languages that I had with my attempt at learning VB. Hell, I even think it was easier for me to learn C, C++ and various assembly languages that it was for me to learn VB. They actually had decent documentation.
Just say no to RAD languages... (Score:1)
Spoiled on VB (Score:1)
I've been learning C++ for the past few months and it was an eye opener as to what a real language is. I've also toyed with Java and find that to be just as interesting. Both offer more than VB can but VB is still nice to go back and do a quick and dirty.
I used to maintain a VB4 app that suffered tremendously from the language's lack of inheritance. Until VB supports such a basic thing as inheritance it will never be more than dulled down hybrid C and C++ features. Not that that doesn't have its uses occasionally.
I agree (Score:1)
Just because a product or language isn't well suited for the things you want/need to do doesn't mean it's automatically inferior.
But for GUI apps? (Score:1)
While I love Perl to death, its GUI abilities are a bit more complex than VB's, and Perl isn't always the best solution for those that don't wish to give out their source code.
But for GUI apps? (Score:1)
With VB, you click on a button, drag it where you want it, double-click it to open a code window, and write a line of code that pops up a message box saying, "You've clicked the button!".
That requires about one line of code.
Can you do that with Python or Tkinter? I'm not complete familiar with either of them, but do they even HAVE a GUI builder where you can do these simple things? I don't think Perl does.
That's what I meant by ease of use and suitability for the general (read: programming-dumb) population. It's pretty easy for someone who doesn't really know much BASIC to write a very simple program complete with a nice GUI interface.
Most other languages like Perl and Python I think require you to do all of the GUI stuff using program code, which makes the task considerably more difficult for those that don't do much programming.
31-bit operating system and other odd comments (Score:1)
Python is better, though.
Just say no to RAD languages... (Score:1)
Unfortunately, there are many management types who don't understand that Rapid Application Development languages might help you get things rolling but the quality and robustness of the code and applications will not hold up in the long run with enhancements and other changes.
War and Peace felt shorter! (Score:1)
I agree completely with him, though. I first started with Visual Basic 3.0 and now that Visual Basic 6 is going to force you to install that Internet Exploder rubbish, as well as the "language's" inherant flaws, you'd be stupid to keep using it!
Visual Basic is really only useful if you're designing front-ends to database applications!
Now, wouldn't Borland C++ Builder be nice for Linux????
31-bit operating system and other odd comments (Score:1)
Ha. Autobike. What a joke. Sure it's nice for Mom and Dad to ride around the block on nice level surface. Real biking requires sweet XTR Rapid Fire Shimanos with the handy thumb switches. Once you get off the road (or into the city) you'll be wishing for a little extra control.
Kashani
So What's the VB killer? (Score:1)
No good teaching languages (Score:1)
But when presented with the prospect of teaching programming to my son, with the rich variety of languages available to me on my Debian Linux system, it seems the simplest and most expedient to use the shell (Bash). After all, you can get pretty far with (unix) shell script programming, and it's just an extension of the basic concept of a command line. I plan to switch over to other languages later (AWK, Perl, then compiled languages), but shell script seems the best way to get his feet wet - the large result for a little work provides good reinforcement.
The only thing that Basic had to recommend it for teaching in the old days was it's availability and it's interactive interpreter environment. Nowadays, there is no need to put up with all it's flaws anymore, since there are so many better alternatives.
Interesting viewpoint (Score:1)
This guy isn't jumping ship from VB to GNU C++ or anything. It seems he's heading for Delphi, which touts the same idea as VB.
All real coders may hold these folks in contempt, but if you think about the idea, it makes sense. Programming VB is not real programming as we all think of it. As an analogy, making a phone call is not really operating the phone system. While UNIX may have some tools that begin to try to accomplish what VB and Delphi are accomplishing, such as Tcl/Tk, Java BDK, etc, none really compare.
Like it or not, VB is used alot, partly because of its appeal to all the non-programmers who need to draw up a little helper-app quickly. The idea behind VB is good; VB itself is just silly. But I think the Unix world would gain alot of non-programming types (especially in the corporate scene) if we had such tools, but which were better implemented. I think CORBA could be used as a foundation of this; choosing a single language like Perl or Tcl/Tk will rob you of the interoperability VB and Delphi can produce using COM.
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
31-bit operating system and other odd comments (Score:1)
Also, what's wrong with automatic transmission on a bicycle? The AutoBike has one, and it appears to work great. I've been considering getting one when I have enough money to spend on such things. I hate shifting; it's not as hard as the AutoBike infomercials make it out to be, but it isn't the most pleasant part of bicycling.
I also know that there *is* mouse wheel control stuff for VB. I used to have a crappy programming job which involved VB (no matter how much I protested to the contrary - I eventually ended up quitting) and as such, I got some Visual Basic magazine. One of the articles in it said "Here is how to add support for the mouse wheel to your applications." It detailed how to make an ActiveX-based control to get mousewheel events.
I support ranting and raving about how bad VB is, but he doesn't choose all the right reasons, at least not completely. A good reason to rant about VB is because it's inconsistent in terms of syntax and implementation. It tries to be like some bastard child of C++ and BASIC, and ends up having an uncomfortable resting point inbetween.
His quote about doodads is very, very true, and I agree with it immensely. That is how *all* M$ language products end up. Look at VC++ with MFC... they had a great opportunity to fix (or at least hide) all of the problems with the WinAPI, but instead they ended up making something even more incomprehensible -- but full of so many features. Yay. So tell me, how do you make a form which exhibits proper packing behavior with a minimum of work? Well, Delphi got it down pretty good even in v1.0.
Now, a good language for general-purpose programming is PERL. It's consistent in that you can do anything in about any way you want; the syntax isn't a stumbling block. Are there any good GUI toolkit things for PERL, though? Like, are there GTK or TK bindings? TCL/TK is almost great, except that I could never figure out how to use that language; its syntax seemed inconsistent and unwieldy to me. IMNSHO, of course.
---
VB? Uh, no... (Score:1)
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
VB - Closed; Delphi - Sorta open (Score:1)
That's what kept me with Delphi, and turned me off of VB.
I liked VB... (Score:1)
Isn't that what matters?
Sure, I wouldn't want to do anything CPU-intensive or mission-critical with it, but for little apps, I thought VB was great. I'm starting on C and C++ now that I have Linux, but don't blast VB because it's simple. A *lot* of people like the idea of a simple to use programming language. Maybe they'll graduate to something beter. Maybe they won't care. Not *everybody* wants to be a programmer.
;-)
Another CS 212 geek :-) (Score:1)
shane
mmmmm hmmmmmm (Score:1)
This is ignorant. True, many things are more difficult to learn. This is not done to make others bow at our feet. This is done to make things easier to do once you know how. Vi and emacs are hard to learn, yes. A vi guru at work, however, is a marvel of efficiency and a sight to behold.
--
Java here (Score:1)
I'm so sick of beating my head against the sun.awt.motif.* packages (which are ENTIRELY undocumented) that I'm seriously considering building a JNI wrapper for GTK just to be done with it once and for all. To hell with platform-independance.
WINE (Score:1)
Regards,
Ben
In case people miss it (Score:1)
Regards,
Ben
This quote pretty much sums up GUIs and M$ (Score:1)
--
You missed the point (Score:1)
I use a GUI a lot, but when push comes to shove, it's the command line that gets the work done.
--
GTK+ is pretty well documented. (Score:1)
mmmmm hmmmmmm (Score:1)
Bubba can write the sweetest foozlebubber out there, and as soon as the foozlebubber is done, Bubba the programmer is basically doe with his job. He has satisfied the contract (with himself and the field) to produce a foozlebubber. There is next to nothing to motivate him to provide an install tool, or other hand-holding pre-use functionality. He is already done with his job.
This reduces the definition of a product in an interesting fashion, especially when compared to standard western commercialism. Products, in this new pattern, are defined by their functionality, not by their presentation, market penetration, market demographics, marketting image, PR agencies, or other soft metrics, but by the simple and inelegant measure of, "What can they do?"
Its a land of tools, of toolboxes, and of work done and things accomplished, not of feel-good, image, or hero worship.
what's his e-mail? (Score:1)
I would like to write some soothing letter like that:
Fruits of good do not grow on the tree of evil. You've chosen to affiliate with Microsoft Evil Empire and now you whine. Well, I guess Larry Wall does not have these problems - I wonder why?
VB is a great idea - I admit. But Tcl/Tk is much better implementation of that idea. Since you live in the Gate's world, you probably don't know what Tcl/Tk is. Never mind. But just one final word - "Lust of money is root of all evil". So I think your sufferings are desrved.
Apart from the idea - Basic itself is a piece of shit language, after the age of 12 you should not use it. Your references to "financial" reasons just make me sick. People that sell their principles for money deserve hell even before they die.
University level MS tutorials (Score:1)
I carefully selected two (the only two I was presently eligible for) courses which contained no immediate references to MS: 1) C Programming, and 2) Web Development and Design.
It turns out (and I didn't find this out until the course syllabus was rewritten by the instructor during the first week of class) that the latter (Web Dev. and Design) was a coverup for 'Microsoft Front Page'.
I found this out today. I've already emailed the instructor and my advisor that I'll be withdrawing from this class. Also, I sent email to my C instructor requesting immediate confirmation that Linux/gcc is an accepted platform for his course. If it is not, I'll be withdrawing from it, as well... and I'll post a message here debunking this 'University' as just another MS Sales Outlet.
Anyone out there know of a University which offers online coursework and degree programs? It's already looking like I won't be able to find the 15 credit hours necessary to complete a degree program at this one without having to pay a 'Gates Tax'.
Try a real language... (Score:1)
It rocks! And the apps are robust as hell!
Ada95 is used for all our apps and GTK makes it all the better....!
Nick
LSG
It has its place (Score:1)
From a business efficiency standpoint, you don't want to have to do REAL work... simply for a "quicky" program.
As I get better with my Java and C++, sure... I will use them more. However, how good should someone who is not a programmer be at these things...?
It all about ddesign (Score:1)
I worked in a well designed ObjC system where we could through up new apps in less than an hour, but we always rewrote them after getting buy in from the customer. We did NOT change languages, just designed them for the long haul, instead of as PROTOTYPES.
With my limited VB experience, I do question how you would do industrial strength VB programming. The libraries are too big to find the "Right Way" to do things.
Well, I missed something: The parentheses... (Score:1)
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
use REALbasic instead (Mac, PC, PalmOS, Linux?) (Score:1)
visual basic = very basic (Score:1)
The problem is people believe him.
Visual Basic (Score:1)
The basic design of VB was much better in version 3 than version 4. In version 3, the original developer - not Microsoft - put a lot of nice touches in the design. Version 4 got rid of 'em all, probably so they wouldn't have to pay the original developer.
If you have to use Windows, I think VB is quite well done for what it does. But once you have to go out of its shell (by using API functions, for instance), you rapidly learn how dismal is Windows.
D
Whoa. (Score:1)
VB is a great idea - I admit. But Tcl/Tk is much better implementation of that idea. Since you live in the Gate's world, you probably don't know what Tcl/Tk is. Never mind. But just one final word - "Lust of money is root of all evil". So I think your sufferings are desrved.
Wow -- who relieved their bladder in your Wheaties this morning?
A person who was an MS advocate -- or at least an advocate of one of their products -- is admitting his displeasure with said product and refuses to continue affiliating himself with it, and your response is effectively "Too bad, you're still going to be one of the first against the wall when the revolution comes?"
We're talking about a freaking software company, and not a particularly talented one at that. Well, talented at software, anyways...
Jay (=
My favorite quote (Score:1)
Has anyone else noticed you can make the same generalization about all MS products?
But wait, there's more (Score:1)
Out of the frying pan? (Score:1)
Hmmm... can't let that one go by. Borland's Turbo Pascal was object oriented before C. How's that for a toy language?
So if Pascal is a "toy" language, you've got to throw stuff like Perl, Java and Tcl/Tk in there as well.
Aw, your just jealous because you can't do RAD with the fastest native language compiler like I can.
LISP! SCHEME! ML! (Score:1)
By the way... (Score:1)
We are a product of our environment.... (Score:1)
Just say no to RAD languages... (Score:1)
Just say no to RAD languages... (Score:1)
The majority are designed for RAD development only but there is one that stands out among the competition: Delphi. The reason is that the language is far more general purpose that its competitors. For example, Delphi, parts of C++Builder and JBuilder are actually written in Delphi - proving that you can produce commercial quality products using it. Another example is Allaire's HomeSite - the best web development tool I've encountered.
If you do some Windows programming and haven't looked at it give it a try. It is the best RAD tool I've encountered so far. The language itself is very close to C++ in its power.
It is just a pity there isn't anything quite like it for Linux.
Cheers,
Kevin.
It's not easy to switch (Score:1)
VB in combination with a bunch of other tools like SQL Server, IIS, COM, MTS, ADO and ASP allow you to develop n-tier systems. I haven't found that kind of integration in the software tools for Linux. Linux now needs tools that are mature and scalable.
You would foist that on a 12 year-old? (Score:1)
Try a starter language (Pascal?) or put 'em on BASIC at age 8.
Does Linux have anything better? (Score:1)
IDE & tools: Sadly no. I'm still waiting for an Open Source equivalent of Visual Studio, which after several iterations had actually become a fairly decent Integrated Development Environment. Note that without preprocessor or header files, IDE's for Java should be easier to implement than C/C++... Is anybody out there working on a GNU IDE, or at least a free Java IDE?
COBOL (Score:1)
Its past (Score:1)