February 2005 Entries
I don’t usually just link to other entries, but sometimes people just say thing that I’ve been meaning to say but just never found the right words for. Scott’s entry on the joys of VB, .NET style, express pretty well the answer to the question of “why VB in .NET?” And I particularly liked Paul Kimmel’s article “Has Visual Basic Lost Its Way?” As I’ve said many times, so much of the past two releases (and the upcoming one) has been just about getting VB onto .NET, which has been a huge endeavor. Not to mention being, for the most...
I’d have to say that it’s an interesting start to my day when I wake up and find that I’ve been smacked down not once, but twice by Joel Spolsky. And that I just had, by far, the most hits ever in one day on my weblog. Not something that happens every day, you know…
As with the comments a few months ago, many people have asked questions regarding legal aspects of the patent application. And, as with my previous replies to those comments, I’m not going to try and answer those questions because I don’t have a law degree and am not...
How ya been doing lately? Glad to see you haven’t forgotten to drop me a line every now and then…
Rocky asks the question “What languages and language families have you been competent in during your career?” and provides his own list. Here’s mine, in order, as I remember it:
BASIC (IBM-5100, a precursor to the IBM PC)
BASIC (TRS-80 Model III)
APL (IBM-5100)
AppleBASIC (Apple ][+ and Apple ][e)
UCSD Pascal (IBM PC)
Unix shell scripting (not sure the machine)
C (ditto)
Turbo Pascal (IBM PC)
GBBS Pro BASIC (a custom BBS language, Apple ][e)
Scheme (Mac)
C++ (IBM PC)
Haskell (Sun)
Visual BASIC 1.0 to present day (Windows & .NET)
SQL (Access & SQL Server)
Java (Windows)
MSIL (.NET)
C#...
OK, normally I try to be pretty even handed about the whole “VB vs. C#” thing since we’re all one big happy family, but sometimes I just gotta wonder... Scott Wiltamuth (he’s the product unit manager for C#) was talking on his blog about the recent Office System Developer Conference and said:
Given VBA's long history with Office, one might expect VB .NET to be the primary language among .NET developers using Office as a platform. But I've seen a lot of anecdotal evidence that C# usage of Visual Studio Tools for Office (aka VSTO) is high. I'll try to get...
In a comment to my griping about having to come up with 3 strengths and weaknesses for my performance review, Scott Mitchell pointed at one of Joel’s older articles entitled “Incentive Pay Considered Harmful.” I must have missed Joel’s posting the first time around, but I did get a chuckle out of reading his rant against the Ship-It Award (or, as some people called it “the Sh*t-It Award”). One amusing thing was that Joel didn’t tell the whole story, though. He says:
The Ship It program was announced with an incredible amount of internal fanfare and hoopla at a big company...
Apparently it’s the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand’s birth, so for a brief period of time the media spotlight is shining again on the founder of Objectivism. Interestingly, there is a way in which Ayn Rand was tangentially involved in the creation of the precursor to this blog. When I received my brand-spanking new 300 baud modem for my birthday way back when, there were no BBSes in my hometown. This led to many long-distance phone bills calling places like Norfolk, VA, which made my parents oh-so-happy. Within a few months, thankfully, some local ones opened up. Most of them were...
It’s mid-year review time again, and this year I’m resolving to do my review by the date that it’s actually due instead of when I usually do it, which is maybe two days before the actual review discussion. I’m generally positive about the review process but, I have to say, the part that gets old the longer you work here is the “Top 3 Strengths and Weaknesses” section. Back in the “old days,” when I had only been at the company, say, three years, this section was actually a very useful opportunity for me to reflect on what I did...