RE: a VB bug story

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Steve Richter
>
> I am using Visual Basic more and more in my work.  I highly
> recommend it to
> AS400 pgmrs to broaden their skills and marketability.  But definitely,
> buyer beware.  Here is a story of a bug and microsoft's response to it.

The problem, IMO, with Microsoft's language strategy is that it is based on
market share rather than application development capability.  I'm not going
to get into a debate here, because it's my opinion and your mileage may
vary, but there seems to be a fundamental difference between RPG and
whatever the language du jour at Microsoft is.

Now, it may be because RPG was written at a different time in the computer
industry, when turf wars were won by having a better product, rather than by
creating a captive market.  Or maybe my vision is clouded by the fact that I
grew up in that time, kind of like the fact that the bands I grew up with
were the last ones to create real music, and everything else is derivative
drivel <grin>.

In any event, there is a practical difference to all of this, at least so
far.  Until recently, your RPG skills could keep you in reasonable
employment.  But whatever Microsoft skills you have are very quickly lost,
because Microsoft's main road to viability is to promote yet another new
standard every seemingly every other month.  How many languages and
operating systems has Microsoft abandoned in the last few years?  You've got
nearly every version of Windows, as well as Java, J++ and VB.

Whereas my S/38 and AS/400 skills both in the operating system and in RPG
still are viable in today's market.  Adjusted for economic pressures, I
think the RPG market has held quite well.  There are lots of VB jobs out
there, but not for long, unless you know VB.Net.  How many J++ programming
jobs are there?  (More for RPG, I can guarantee you that much.)

That is changing to be sure.  The "evolution" of RPG into a sort of
Java-like language with native I/O support is a bit disconcerting, but at
the same time it's made programming very much more interesting than it used
to be.  And I'm not upset, because IBM still supports the old RPG code and
compiler, and I don't see that changing any time soon.  Whereas you can see
from Steve's post that Microsoft is all but abandoning the VB platform for
the "new and improved VB.Net" because it's all about the marketshare.
VB.Net forces people to use .Net, and and .Net is simply Microsoft's way of
tying you to their proprietary technology so that they don't have to worry
about pesky things like quality or service.

Joe