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August 29, 2003
Visual Basic & .NET
Well, I'll say that my humiliation is just about complete. I'm going to take this job as soon as they offer it to me, but it is now abundantly clear that although I am hired as an architect, I will spend a significant percentage of my time babysitting an application built on Visual Basic, MS Access and Excel. That will be OK for a year, I suppose.
But the upshot of this is that now I have to take this kind of crap seriously. I'll be getting my OReilly book on VB and .NET and all that rot so I can work this puppy, but I must say that my enthusiasm is less than stellar. The only good thing is that I will get to play with the API to my favorite database with some depth.
Now J tells me that .NET is not bad at all, and that with the full Visual Studio license kit and all that, that it may be pleasurable to work with. That may be something to look forward to, sorta. But I still want to work with the Linux security guys. You can imagine the looks on their faces..
What is completely on the plus side is that the subject matter for this application is top notch. It's something most everybody has some conception of and is absolutely critical to the company I'll be working at: Film Revenues.
Just yesterday I spoke on the phone to the partner of the one of three folks I respect who are Microsoft Heads. All of them have written books on their subjects, one of which I own. So along with J, I'm not in such bad company. Still, this is going to suck on my resume.
Posted by mbowen at August 29, 2003 01:14 PM
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Comments
Since I'm in a similar situation to where you were, I'd say that you're actually a very lucky guy. I've been reading up on .NET since 2001, and so far I haven't been able to find any work writing for the platform.
Here in the UK, the thing most of the employers seem to want is Java experience, and J2EE in particular. It doesn't help matters that I went to an American university - it's safe to say that British employers are a lot more insular than their American counterparts in that respect.
As for the technical merits of .NET, let me say this: as much as I dislike the Beast of Seattle, the .NET platform is a real joy to work with! It's extremely comprehensive, very orthogonal (i.e., no useless duplication of APIs, and no need to worry about whether this or that is deprecated), and the Visual Studio .NET IDE is really something else; there just isn't anything in the Java world that even comes close for functionality and ease of use.
In short, from a technical point of view, I wouldn't worry at all about your "street cred." The only people who poo-poo .NET are the ignorant fan-boys who wouldn't recognize a good thing if they saw it. It isn't the VB of old that "Real Programmers" could safely look down their noses at, that's for certain.
Posted by: Abiola Lapite at August 30, 2003 02:18 PM
It appears that within a few months, I'm going to have to make a decision about the future of these apps. It is most likely that I'm going to decide one of three directions. We will either make the tail of the application wag the dog of the database - in which case there are two options. A) Maintain all the code and build new code in VB 6.
B) Migrate the entire puppy to the Visual Fred. AKA VB.NET.
Both of these will be labor intensive. One way is labor without a future the other has a future but a learning curve I'm not sure I want to have to drag my folks up, leading as I would be from the blind position.
The other option is to purchase a development kit which uses the JAVA API to the database and then a nice set of tools around the Formula One grid object.
More to come.
(I stopped thinking about VB when Bruce McKinney dismissed it.)
Posted by: Cobb at August 31, 2003 07:39 PM