₦airaland Forum

Well, to me VB.NET is a completely different language from VB6.
But if you have programmed in VB6 it will be easy for you to migrate to VB.NET.
You just have to start thinking more in terms of Objects.

If you are still coding in VB6, I'll advice you to move to VB.NET because it gives
you the full power of a modern day object oriented programming language.

LearnBook:
Potential developers should also study actual trends. These days a lot of software are webbased and based on the common LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql and PHP). These are all free. Most of the software developers I met do not appear to have these skills.

If the only tool you have is a hammer then every problem begins to look like a nail.

There is more to software development than just LAMP.
Agreed that LAMP is good but is Linux, Apache, Mysql and PHP coded by web developers?

Please let's not narrow our views.

In place of ScaleHeight and ScaleWidth you use ClientSize.Height and ClientSize.Width respectively

I think the document here http://media.wiley.com/assets/156/96/dictionary.pdf will go a long way in helping
you convert legacy VB6 code to VB.NET

Hope that helps

prodgalson:
I read his blog posting too, We'll see what silverlight brings to the table soon :-)

ps: Silverlight was formally known as WPF/E , not WPF. WPF/E stands for Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, and it is a web based subset of WPF, and is OS-independent.

Thanx for the correction man.
I only picked an interest in Silverlight when I read about the DLR.
I don't want to digress much from the topic of the post but I think SilverLight will be a great technology but
will hardly be able to beat flash.
Well Adobe is not asleep and they know that ecosystem much more than Microsoft.

There's a thread discussing Silverlight here in the programmer's forum.

Maybe we'll get more views about Silverlight there.

Yeah, Microsoft At It Again.
But I think there's going a tough competition to Adobe. This may not be directly from
Microsoft's technical expertise but from stunts they will perform in promoting Silverlight.

First of all there're talks of open sourcing some portions of Silverlight.

Secondly there're is the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) which allows you to mix
serveral different languages in one program. I saw an example in which Javascript,
Ruby and VB.NET are mixed.

Thirdly there're serious plans by some open source projects to implement some parts of Silverlight on Linux.
At least that will fill the Linux gap. Although the part of Silverlight which they're most interested in is the DLR

Adobe will have to do some Marketing tricks also to counter MS. They already have the advantage of
market coverage i.e their're plug-ins are almost everywhere. I believe a little extra frendliness to
open standards (which already exists) and the open source community will help kick Microsoft out of it's domain.

I first heard about him when he was making an argument/comparison b/w WPF and flash in his blog.
Although the comparison seems to be highly biased towards MS but I think he seems to be very intelligent
and knows the technologies he's talking about.

To diverge a little WPF is now what is MS released as SilverLight and ther're a lot of interesting things in it that
warrants a thread on it.

Back to Dare, I think he is a great IT professional.

dan_onyeka:
what is the latest and the most lucrative programming language in vogue in the Nigerian IT world of today, reply and give your reasons.

I don't understand what lucrative means here. Do you mean efficient ?. If that's what you mean then I think it depends on the programmer as much as it depends on the programming language.

If you mean money earner then I think you will hardly have the patience to learn programming to the point of earning money with it. All those great programmers you hear about in the IT world learned programming because of the passion they have for it and later used their skills to earn money and not the other way round.

Just my views, just my views.

Go and study the System.Drawing namespace in the .NET documentation.
You get classes like pen, brush e.t.c that will help you draw.

We r third world and that says it all, people should afford 3 square meals before worrying about high tech,

@Oke_amu, is that why you took the cowards way out by escaping to America.

I think everything is in the mind. If you think you can be great then you can and if you think you are a failure then you are.
A mentally enslaved person will continue being a slave even if you free him and a free mind will continue being free even if you enslave the body.

@ezeagu, you are in the programming forum not religion.
Why don't you kindly move your topic to the relevant area of nairaland.

master d:
how do i connect my access database to my form in visual basics

Alright this is a really quick solution.
Assuming your database is C:\mydb.mdb and you have a table called data and fields firstname and othernames in the table.

1- go to reffrences under projects and select Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects 2.x

2- Somewhere in your code type the following

Dim Con as new ADODB.Connection
   Dim rsData as new ADODB.Recordset


  Con.ConnectionString = "Provider = Microsoft.Jet.Oledb.4.0; Data Source = C:\mydb.mdb" 
  Con.Open

  rsData = Conn.Execute("Select * From Data"

At this point your recordset(rsData) will be filled with the records from your table(Data)
You can go ahead and manipulate the data in the recordset.


This is only suppose to be a pointer. One cannot give a full ADO tutorial here. Do some googling
and you will find a lot of resources.

Just an advice. I think instead of putting a lot of effort learning vb6 you should just move to vb.net.
vb6 is getting obsolete and its no longer supported by it's creators (Microsoft).

@ogbon, the following article might guide you
http://www.vbforums.com/archive/index.php/t-121667.html

@Dynast, programmatically, a matrix is simply a 2-dimensional array.
e.g to create a 4X4 matrix you do something like this

Dim Matrix(3,3) as integer

That is if your array index starts from zero.
As for the rest. I think am not in a very good position to study for you

Hey where's dejisys. I thought he's ready to help, that's why he started this topic.

@rookie, I was also joking

I apologize if the title of my topic hurts. But I think I didn't break any forum rules.
I believe many wouldn't have been attracted to this Topic if the Title isn't like that.
You can see how much contribution we have gotten because of the emotions attached to it.

Just for the record I'll say it now "Java Is A Great Technology"
but I think my 10 points still stand since nobody was able to convince me otherwise

cocoon:
IG, Sbucareer , i think u guys are great programmers,

Thanx cocoon. It's really flattering to get compliments from other programmers.
Thanx to everybody on this forum, I've learned some things as a result of the discussion especially from
Sbucareer,Fdeveloper and ucard.

Thanx all.

@Fdeveloper, You have the right to your views and I respect them (your views).
I do not hate java either. I wouldn't know the little I know in java if I've never used it.

The aim of my post is to disspell the belief that java is always the king and .NET is just a Microsoft product and so should be regarded as bad.

I know the title of my post may seem like an attack on java and may hurt many. This is normal because people tend to have some emotional attachement to the technologies they use. But with all humility I don't intend to withdraw the statement that dotNET is better than java. I came up with 10 points, I'll expect somebody to prove them wrong and therefore convince me that the statement is wrong.

Fdeveloper:
Re .NET being the "syntactically richer", maybe I'm missing something but as C# and Java both use Getters/Setters I still maintain that the syntax is just different and I for one don't see any added "richness" for want of a better expression in C# as opposed to java particularly as the core functionality in both cases remains the same. but that of course is purely my personal opinion and undoubtedly others such as yourself will disagree with me. I guess the bottom line is it's just a matter of personal taste.

I disagree with that statement because in my last post, I've demonstrated that properties in .NET are more than just ordinary setters/getters. Apart from encapsulating the getter and setter into a single unit, you can pass parameters to properties and can make objects have default properties.

This are all things that you can't find in java and that demonstrates the added syntactic richness of dotNET over java.
I'm only trying to be objective here. It's not a matter of personal preferrence because even if I prefer the dotNET style in java I can't get it because java lacks it. But I can do the java style of getters/setters in dotNET.

That's the richness am talking about.

think you may have misunderstood the concept of what constitutes a property in OOP. A property is an encapsulated item of data that is stored within an object and therefore the syntax by which you manipulate the property is irrelevant. Whether you use the .NET style or Java Getters/Setters when manipulating the property, the result achieved in both cases is encapsulation so your statement that Java does not have properties is erroneous.

You can certainly argue that you prefer one syntax to the other but that's something different.

Actually I didn't learn programming in the classroom. I learned on the keyboard by writing programs and reading books. So some words I use may be the way they are used in the field and not how they are defined in the classroom.

The following is your code;

private string queueName;

public string m_queueName
{
   get { return queueName; }
   set { queueName = value; }
}

You have demonstrated that this can be done with dotNET,but can not be done in Java.
You've just told yourself that dotNET languages are syntactically richer without realizing it.

You don't get that "Syntactic sugar" in java.

By the way you can even have default properties in dotNET such that passing the an object will amount to passing the default property

e.g if queueName is the default property of object store

string strQueue = store

and

string strQueue = store.queueName

will be the same thing.

Apart from that properties can have parameters apart from just return values

e.g

string strQueue = store.queueName("FDeveloper"

You see dotNET languages have richer sysntax than java

Another Thing I found in dotNET but cannot find in Java are Attributes. Please tell me if am just ignorant of it's presence.

And thanx for educating me about the definition of properties.

Thanx Otuyelu, you've said it all.

Many people tend to always defend the technology they use and refuse to open up to new ideas.

I believe that with time companies like oracle and microsoft will start giving their database engines for free.
This is because of the challenge they will be facing from open source database systems.
Their revenue may then be through selling tools that you use along with the engines.

Microsoft employed that technique and is working for them. They give out their dotNET SDK for free and derive their revenue
from selling Visual Studio.NET.

"mission critical systems"
This word has really became a buzz word.
Look at it closely. Every company's data is critical to their mission as a business.

I do not want to start an argument, but I'll advise us to use all the packages we are trying to compare so that we talk on experience.

What I said about Oracle is my opinion. I said it before, I've never used oracle.

Talking about MSSQL, I've used it before and have now vowed never to use it again.

Firebird is far ahead of MSSQL in many areas and is available for Windows,Linux, Mac,Solaris and FreeBSD.

But one thing everybody knows is that their is a lot of hype around oracle. That doesn't mean Oracle is not good but the hype exists.

rookie:
Ok. IG - You won the argument, but one thing you must know is that Sbucareer is a chief and mentor on Nairaland - he has paid enough dues in training lots of folks on this forum. so please address him with respect

Sorry, I didn't know am playing with the big boys. Accept my apologies if I at anytime sound disrespectful.
@rookie, please can you give me the names of the other chiefs (if there are any) on nairaland so that such
a mistake shouldn't be repeated

php support is available with the firebird/interbase php extension
There is also a jdbc driver which you can download from the firebird site http://firebirdsql.org

I think the big boys run oracle for many reasons.
Oracle is the market leader in database, this i think is because they are the first people to implement a relational database management system despite the fact that IBM did the research and published the white paper.

But there are other DBMS's out there that are very good.
I cannot do any comparisons with oracle because I've never used oracle.

But I'll tell you that firebird/interbase is a real matured DBMS and has been used in production environments since 1981

From the on-set it has features like stored procedures, triggers,events e.t.c plus it is the leader when it comes to handling concurrent data access. This means there is an extremely low possibilty of corrupting your data.

Based on my little research, I came to understand that there are some features of firebird/interbase (Like Multi Generational Architechture) that only became available on Oracle and MSSQL after interbase is open sourced to become firebird.

Apart from that firebird has a very friendly license. Unlike mysql one is not forbidden from using it in commercial applications. In fact there are companies that derive their database products from firebird e.g Yaffil and fyracle.

In my opinion, many individuals and organizations go for oracle because of the hype around it. I've came across many people that think "oracle" is the term for all relational databases.

@rookie, I think the problem is that you did not specify an updatecommand for the dataAdapter.
The code in blue is my addition to your code.

Private Sub UpdateDataBase(ByVal ds As DataSet)

Dim dbConnString As String

Dim dbConnection As SqlConnection = New SqlConnection
dbConnection.ConnectionString = "Data Source=ServerName; Initial Catalog=DB;" & _
"UID=uid;PASSWORD=psw; Trusted_Connection=false"
dbConnection.Open()

Dim DBCmd As SqlCommand
DBCmd = New SqlCommand("Select * from [Table1]", dbConnection)

Dim DBAdapter As New SqlDataAdapter
DBAdapter.SelectCommand = DBCmd

Dim builder as new SqlCommandBuilder
builder.DataAdapter = DBAdapter
DBAdapter.UpdateCommand = builder.getUpdateCommand
DBAdapter.InsertCommand = builder.getInsertCommand

Dim DBds As New DataSet
DBAdapter.Fill(DBds, "Table1"

DBds = ds.Copy()
DBds.AcceptChanges()
DBAdapter.Update(DBds.Tables("Table1")
DataGrid1.DataSource = DBds.Tables(0).DefaultView
DataGrid1.DataBind()

DBds = Nothing
DBAdapter = Nothing
DBCmd = Nothing
ds = Nothing

End Sub

The DataAdapter needs to know the SELECT, INSERT,UPDATE and DELETE statements to use against the database.
You have already specified the SELECT sql but the remaining are missing.
I used the sqlCommandbuilder to build the remaining sql statements so you wont have to do it manually.
Hope this helps.

I am even beginning to fade up with Java now. I am just in the process of getting fade up with Software Development.

@sbucareer, try strolling out of java a little. Explore other technologies. There're many exciting technologies that I believe will resuscitate your interest in programming.
I don't know, but you may have been doing the same thing over and over again, that's why you are bored.

Just an advice

babasin:
@IG
Finally, that explain why they are always unreliable!

It is the most unreliable Rail in western europe.

Serious firms run on Oracle.

Can you just explain how their use of firebird made them unreliable ?
And is the US navy and the other organizations mentioned also unreliable because they use firebird ?

@sbucareer, Am not trying to reignite a flame here but there're things you got wrong
I will try to correct them so that others will not get it wrong as you did.
please feel free to correct me if I err.

While on that learn more about JVM the heart of java compiler.

It's not OK to refer to the JVM as the heart of the java compiler. JVM is like a virtual
computer that run bytecodes produced by the compiler. In other words the compiler targets the
JVM. Similarly when I say native code in my past posts I mean code that target real processor
architechtures like x86,SPARC e.t.c

Java has got lookAndFeel that mirros the current operating system you are using if you do not like the look and feel of java.
You are already used to MS GUI, so if any software does not look like MS GUI it is not good in your eyes

Agreed java can pick the OS native look and feel, but look at all the stress you have to go through before doing that.
And still you can tell that it's a java swing interface, because it doesn't really blend.

This is your code

import javax.swing.UIManager;


try
     {
              UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
     catch(Exception e){
             e.printStackTrace();
    }

But on .NET this is done automatically on all the popular GUI toolkits (GTK#,Winforms)
As you can see on .NET you have a choice of serveral GUI libraries (Winforms,Qt#,GTK#,Wx.net)
Think of the freedom it gives you.
On java, I only know of swing and swt(which is developed because of drawbacks of swing).

He talks about games and 3D. I am not even going to bother myself.
I wonder why all major mobile phone developer uses Java as their primary game platform?

check out the unity 3d site here http://unity3d.com
Am not talking about games you play on mobile phones. Am talking about serious realistic 3d rendering that require good performance.

Now, tell us how many people or company(s) are developing .NET?
Let me answer that, only MS. How many people are developing J2EE? Hundreds.

1. The Mono Project (http://mono-project.com): An open source project sponsored by Novell. That means you can get commercial support from Novell.

2. dotGNU or portable.net (http://dotgnu.org): Another open source implementation backed by the Free Software Foundation

3. Microsoft.NET: self explanatory

There may be others I don't know about.

I particularly, the reason why I stay away from recommending .NET for my client is one reason, security.
If you have worked in a firm that virus attacks MS server, you would be hopeless upset.
MS users spend lots of money on hardware security and software.

.NET specification has security in mind from the beginning. You should read about security in the .NET framework.
Thing like Code Access Security which I don't think has a parallel in java.
Another thing you got wrong is that the .NET specification is not tied to the Windows operating system.
As can be seen in my past posts,you can have .NET on a variety of hardware architectures and operating systems.

Everybody here can answer this one. MS key strategic competition is MONOPOLY.
If Sun wants you to write .NET in Java platform MS have to remove some of the proprietary licence restriction before Sun can do that, but MS would not.

This has been explained before. SUN can develop .NET if they want without paying microsoft anything. .NET is governed by ECMA not MS.

After you would start to talk about open source. Java is open source that is why MS can write Java in .NET.

Java language is available on .NET platforms long before java is open sourced. Java is only recently open sourced.
Please get it right, The Java language on .NET compiles code that target the .NET runtime not the JVM. This means a java
programmer doesn't have to learn a new language to bring his skills to .NET.

I personally think that SUN never wants to open source java. They only did so as a survival strategy for the Java technology. Afterall the open source community has been pressurizing SUN for years to Open Source Java but they refused. Why now ?
Look at how many Linux developers are using C# now. This is because they know they are not tying themselves to any corporate organization's technology.

Don't get me wrong. I am not a fan of Microsoft and neither am I a fan of SUN microsystems.
I am a fan of good technology especially if it has no strings attached.

rock2:
Who cares

JAVA makes my phone more fun.

Your phone will be more fun, if java is better.

Yes we agree, an exhaustive ignorant list

I Like That Line. Maybe this long post is just another show of ignorance.

wavemasta:
@Topic, sorry to disagree, but Java supports generics, especially jdk 1.5.
try googling it yourself and see. And I have also done some generic stuff in Java.

I googled and found it. Thanx for educating me.

But I still cannot find delegates. I haven't used JDK 1.5, but I still can't find anything on delegates in java.
Except if there's any design pattern stunt to emulate it.

Long time ago from version 1.1, Java has got properties, delegates and resently generics

@Sbucareer, I still cannot find properties in Java. You have to use the getter and setter methods instead.

in .NET you can have something like

 txtName.text = "Nairaland"

and

string strName = txtName.text

but in java it will have to be like

txtName.setText("Nairaland";

and

String strName = txtName.getText();

See what I mean ?

my2cents:
If you are waiting for an apology, you might want to pull up a chair, because it will be a while. I have no ego.

I don't have a big ego either, so I don't need an apology.

When I see/hear things which suggest facts but are yet far from it, it gives me heartburn.

If they are far from facts then you can prove it point by point.

@sbucareer, there's no need to be afraid of MS windows weakneses.
The CLI have been implemented on many platforms. I love refferring to Mono because it's one of the most
popular implementations apart from Microsoft's .NET.

Look at the platforms that supports Mono

Supported Architectures Operating system
s390, s390x (31 and 64 bits) Linux
SPARC (32) Solaris, Linux
PowerPC Linux, Mac OSX
x86 Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD,Microsoft Windows, Solaris, OS X
x86-64: AMD64 and EM64T (64 bit) Linux
IA64 Itanium2 (64 bit) Linux
ARM: little and big endian Linux (both the old and the new ABI)
Alpha Linux
MIPS Linux

I've not been tracking dotGNU recently but I know it's supported on Linux,Windows and Mac OSX. It's also not as mature as Mono.
You can find mono here mono-project.com

@Sbucareer, Now we're talking like grown ups. I know you're a grown up programmer

If you have said my Conceptual view why dotNet is better to J2EE I would not bother myself to going this length. It takes me time and energy to compile this post you know?

The post invited you to criticize my views, I repeat my views.

So, should I give facts against your other attacks ?

Actually the purpose of the post is to make us broaden our horizon and discourage our blind love
for certain technologies.

I told you am a fan of Java. I even used java for my undergraduate project.
But that doesn't mean I should close my eyes to it's weakneses.

I really admire Jim Hugunin. After creating Jython, he started a similar project on dotNet primarily to
prove that dotNet is not good enough. But when he discovered it's stronger, he proudly admitted it.

@my2cents,@Bossman grow up.

You never stop to amaze me, Mono what is Mono. It was never built for MS. Mono is the name of an open source project led by Novell and later adapoted by MS in its quest to pass J2EE.

I said that I'll be using the words CLI and .NET interchangeably to mean the CLI. This can be any implementation of the CLI.
This can be Mono, Microsoft .NET or dotGNU.

Just a small correction @Sbucareer, Microsoft never adopted mono.
Microsoft came up with the .NET specification called CLI and the C# specification and handed it over to ECMA.
This means that ECMA is now in control of the CLI and not Microsoft and that's why anybody who wish to implement
the specification is free to do so (Don't pay anybody anuthing for licence )

Mono is one of such implementation and so is dotGNU.

In your own opinion, tell us if the speed of memory, CPU and hardware architecture affects the time execution of software in today's infrastructure? Is your sentiments based on the days of 808 286 processor and when memory was only limited to 32MB? And when our motherboard can only shift 66MHz?

@Sbucareer, Is that an admission that Java is really slow and you have to rely solely on your hardware to get good performance.

my2cents:
sbucareer et al, no mind am jo

I think I have a pretty accurate profile of IG: either just starting school or is about to graduate. Either way, I think he was given an assignment on the topic and is trying to impress us (as many have tried to impress me) with his vast "knowledge". Obviously, he is more than a bit wet behind the ears.

Using proof by contradiction, I will say this: JAVA is multi-platform and as has been stated above, thanks to J2ME et al, JAVA is widely being used in various applications and I wouldn't be surprised to find out IG owns a couple or so such devices.

Rather than ask the question and open it up for debate, he speaks as an authority. What a joke!

There's no need to attack IG's personality. This is no place to massage our egos. I just want you guys to prove that the points I raised are wrong.
I raised

MAYORIN1:
Went through the site - ok

But I don't think they are neck deep into software development

They also employ Visual Basic . Net

Man if one must succeed in software development you have to very versatile in some many developmental tools, say:

Java, C, C#, C++, Python etc not just window based tools.

Tools don't write programs but programmers do.
Good programs come from good programmers and Bad programs come from Bad programmers even if they have the best tools.

By the way, VB.NET is cross platform.

Anyway good job considering the fact that its coming from KD

Just a question. Does a persons geographical location determines how good or bad his software is ?

I've checked their website and to me, they look like they really have a future in software development.