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 »  Home  »  Windows Development  »  Welcome to the City of .NET
Welcome to the City of .NET
by Serge Baranovsky | Published  10/12/2001 | Windows Development | Rating:
Serge Baranovsky

Serge Baranovsky worked as a Director of Software Development for LYNX Medical Systems (lynxmed.com), based in Seattle, WA. He has previously worked as a consultant specializing in client-server and n-tier applications.

In his 12 year strong career as a professional developer, Serge has interacted with hundreds of developers and has developed various applications - from developer tools to mission critical banking and emergency medicine systems. He has a Masters degree in Rocket Science from Kharkov Aviation University. Originally from the Ukraine, Serge moved to the United States in January 1999.

Serge has been working with Visual Basic since the version 3.0 was introduced, and is a firm supporter of Microsoft's technology since then. Besides DevCity.NET, Serge also owns and maintains vbCity.com, a Visual Basic developer community website that provides help to the developers; and distributes developer tools for use with VB and .NET, including the widely popular PrettyCode.Print and CodeIt.Once.

 

View all articles by Serge Baranovsky...
Welcome to the City of .NET

This website is a spin-off from vbCity.com and dedicated to the .NET technology. There were a few reasons for me to construct a separate website on .NET, firstly, the technology is brand new and so much different from the "classic" VB programming approach. Secondly, for very long time I wanted to create an ezine style website which I couldn't have done with vbCity.com because of it's size. Finally, this website is not going to be only about VB.NET, no, we will be talking about ASP.NET, C# and ADO.NET as well as VB.NET. What is so great about the .NET world is that there is not much of a difference what language you are programming in, basically it now comes to a preference of the semantics.

Since Microsoft has announced the .NET technology, acceptance of it varies among the developers. Most of C/C++ programmers are excited about new language C# and what .NET brings to the table. The VB community on the other hand, in majority is pretty hard nosed on the new VB.NET language. Why is that? Here is a quote from the Dan Appleman's (the "Name" in the VB world, author of the Moving to VB.NET, Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API and other great books, president of Desaware Inc.) reply I came across in the news.devx.com.vb7 newsgroup the other day (find the complete text is here):

I accept an acknowledge that much of what I knew is not relevant to .NET and that I have a lot to learn to earn back the right to be called a "guru".

So, is that it? I should admit it's tough being a "guru" or just fluent in VB to learn .NET platform pretty much from scratch. But, hey, isn't programming about learning? If you don't move along with the technology you stay behind... We, as VB developers, have finally got a chance to program in a powerful "real" language. Let's use it! I, personally, have been waiting on VB being a "real" language for a looong time. And, you know what? You now have a good argument if your C/C++ colleagues will try to tease you! At last.

I hope you can use Dan Appleman as an example and this will encourage you to consider .NET as your future tool and the use of this website to help you.

vbCity.NET is not about us teaching you how to program in .NET. It's about us learning .NET with you. Feel free to post your questions and/or answer the others. We all are in pretty much the same boat here; learning new technology. There are no .NET gurus yet at the moment, and if someone tells you (s)he, is don't believe them! :)

I'd like to express special gratitude to Steve Sartain for "pushing" me into creation of this website, contributing his time and ideas while I was developing vbCity.NET and great articles after.

A separate thanks to Jonathan Goodyear of angryCoder.com for the great eZine website scripts. When I started thinking of a .NET website I couldn't imagine it was built on a platform other than the .NET Framework. It would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? Fortunately for me I found Jonathan's angryCoder.com which he provides the full source code for. The eZine style fit just great into my vision of the new website. These scripts saved me enormous amount of time, all I needed to do was customize them and develop a few enhancements. If you are interested in learning how vbCity.NET was built you can download the source code from angryCoder.com for just a minimal donation. Believe me they a way worth it!

You may notice not all columns have articles yet. That's right, we are just starting and some columns are just placeholders for what we are going to cover on this website. You must keep coming back, we are going to get bigger.

If you are interested in writing for either of these columns, if you have an idea for your own column, or if you already know you want to write for vbCity.NET, then click here to get started.

So, feel free to look around and leave feedback on this article (or any other) by clicking the "Post your comments" link below the article. You are welcome to use the forums (you can find link to them on the left navigation bar) and ask question and/or help the others. We are happy to see you in the City of .NET!

Hi,
I'm Serge Baranovsky
and that is my story for you...
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Comment #1  (Posted by Vlado on 11/06/2001)

Is your portal somehow related to IBuySpy portal?
 
Comment #2  (Posted by Serge Baranovsky on 11/06/2001)

Not really. You can find in the article as well as on the 'about us' page that we have used the eZine scripts we have purchased from angrycoder.com as a template and modified them.

I actually tried the IBuySpy portal once and I like the angrycoder.com implementation better :)
 
Comment #3  (Posted by Robaire on 11/07/2001)

Hello,

Congratulations on what appears to be a good start. I really like the eZine format, and your modest attitude.

Concerning the following remark in your introduction:

=We, as VB developers, have finally got a chance to program in a powerful "real" language. Let's use it! I, personally, have been waiting on VB being a "real" language for a looong time. And, you know what? You now have a good argument if your C/C++ colleagues will try to tease you! At last.=

I expect that most readers will consider a "real" Windows-based language one that can produce "real" DLLs. A dig that VB programmers have had to put up with from C++ programmers (apart from object-orientation) has been that VB cannot produce true Windows DLLs.

Stephen Teilhet, in his excellent "Subclassing and Hooking with Visual Basic", states that "...you cannot use VB.Net to install system-wide hooks..." The code must be placed within a Win32 DLL. "... You can write this DLL using Visual C++ 6 or Visual C++.NET" (page 534).

Any comments on this? It appears that we are not getting complete autonomy with VB.Net, and that we will still need Visual C++ to produce "real" DLLs. I do hope I've misunderstood, but it appears pretty clear.

Maybe an article on exactly what types of DLLs VB.Net can produce and the functions they will support would help...

Thanks,

Robaire



 
Comment #4  (Posted by Serge Baranovsky on 11/13/2001)

Maybe I've misunderstood but I would disagree with Stephen. My understanding of a systemwide hook is the ability to trap a message (any message) that windows produces. You must then be able to eat, modify or leave this message. This is something that we could achieve with VBx using subclassing tools (and with a little effort with plain code), the change in .NET is simply we have a WndProc Event that we can override.

Now about the "real" DLLs and C++. I'm afraid so neither VB or C# has this ability, but you can't have everything. I understand that MS have received some grief for this so we'll keep our fingers crossed. On the other hand, how many VB developed would even know what this means, never mind consider using it.
 
Comment #5  (Posted by Richard Gilbert on 07/03/2002)

Hi - just a note to say the site looks great and
 
Comment #6  (Posted by an unknown user on 04/02/2007)
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The goal of this article is only to write this article. Nothing more.
 
Comment #7  (Posted by Sheriff on 11/23/2007)
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My mind is like a bunch of nothing. My life's been really unremarkable , but it's not important. I can't be bothered with anything these days. I just don't have anything to say lately.
 
Comment #8  (Posted by on 07/22/2008)
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Comment #9  (Posted by on 07/25/2008)
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Comment #10  (Posted by on 10/11/2009)
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Comment #11  (Posted by Erokgi on 11/24/2009)
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Comment #12  (Posted by is not clinically significant in normal doses. on 11/25/2009)
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Nice! We really amused by the website.: URLsWithURL
 
Comment #13  (Posted by Pilojg on 11/28/2009)
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Comment #14  (Posted by Rock on 06/28/2011)
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You've hit the ball out the park! Incedrible!
 
Comment #15  (Posted by Anisha on 06/29/2011)
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Great artlice, thank you again for writing.
 
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