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The newsletter is compiled by DevCity.NET NewsMasters Ged Mead and Mike McIntyre Advertisement
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More info and free trial at http://www.red-gate.com/code_profiling.htm Table Of Content:
The new Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET 2003 Professional Special Edition has tools to help you build high-performance Web applications.
Diary of a .NET Newbie:
Being Blunt About C#
by Ged Mead I signed up for an online course in C# this week. Over the past couple of years, I've read with a fairly low level of interest the various comments and criticisms that developers in one language use to poke at their "rivals". Personally, I've never seen the need to justify which language I programme in. I've used a few different ones over the years and, more by chance (and a process of creeping evolution), ended up at Visual Basic back in its Version 3 days. I've stuck with VB right through to VB6 and, of course, took the leap across the chasm a couple of years ago into VB.NET. Where, essentially I've been quite happy to clamber up the learning curve. So, if I'm so darn cosy with VB.NET, why this sudden strange urge to learn C#, you may wonder. Well, it's mainly because I've been doing a lot of research into graphics and GDI+ recently and, sad to say, many of the more in-depth examples and tutorials are written in C#. Not all of them - there are some excellent articles written by VB.Netters too, but the language of choice of the majority of the hard-core GDI+ gang seems to be C#. Whether this goes back to their C, C++ roots, I don't know. Not having travelled along that route I couldn't really say if the "Cs" are better suited than the "VBs" for graphics work. (Although I'm sure there are a whole load of strong views out there about that!). Anyway, while doing this research I had to try to understand the logic of the articles at the same time as doing the language translation on the fly. It did mean that where the code was getting really down and dirty (read 'damn hard to understand') that this double hurdle was turning an already difficult subject into a brain-hurting one. So I thought I'd see for myself what the fuss was all about, rolled up my sleeves and got started on a C# beginners course At this early stage, all I can say is that although there are obvious similarities about how the two languages work (they share the .NET Framework, after all), C# does seem to make life unnecessarily difficult in some areas. The feature I least like at the moment is case sensitivity. C#, for those who don't know, is case sensitive. When you've spent years happily typing in the correct letters, ( if not always with exactly the right capitalisation), it takes a long time to unlearn the habit. I'm not saying that this relatively sloppy approach is the best way, but it is the way I've been able to use for a long, long time. So breaking the habit isn't that easy. If I'm totally honest, I would admit that the facilities that been built in to VB.NET to make life easier may also have made me just a little bit lazier. (Oh, go on, then, I'll admit it - a lot lazier). On the other hand, anything that helps you make the job easier has to be a good thing, doesn't it? (Answers on the back of £20 note, addressed to XTab c/o VBCity, Scotland, please) So, it's back to my Step by Step book and the online tutorial to see what inter-language minefield I've got to pick my way through next. It's nice to think that once I've finished the course in about five weeks time, I will at least have an informed opinion about the rights and wrongs when I next log on somewhere and find another of those "my language is better than yours" arguments raging. I just hope I'll have the sense not to join in! - Junior (Ged Mead aka XTab, xtab@vbcity.com) .NET Upgraders:
Evolving to VB.NET. Part 2 - Making the Decision to Evolve
by Mike McIntyre This is the second in a series of articles which discuss evolving to VB.NET from a previous version of Visual Basic. VBCU and VBCIn this article series, users of versions of Visual Basic prior to VB.NET will be identified by the acronym: VBCU, which stands for Visual Basic Classic User. Previous versions of Visual Basic will be identified by the acronym: VBC, which stands for Visual Basic Classic. When should YOU evolve from VBC to .NET?YOU should evolve from VBC to .NET when the benefits YOU will get from upgrading to .NET clearly outweigh the costs YOU will pay to upgrade to .NET. Determining when to evolve is all about YOU. The benefits gained and the costs paid to upgrade to .NET vary a lot from individual to individual and company to company. You can't use other people's results to decide what is right for you. You must figure this one out yourself. To determine if the benefits YOU will get from upgrading to VB.NET will outweigh the costs YOU will pay, you need to conduct a "cost-to-benefits analysis". To do this you need to calculate YOUR cost to upgrade and the value of the benefits YOU will gain from upgrading, compare the cost to the value of the benefits, and then make your upgrade decision. How can you determine YOUR cost to upgrade to .NET? In a future article in this series I will present some ways to estimate what it will cost YOU, or YOUR COMPANY, to evolve from VBC to VB.NET. How can you determine the value of the benefits YOU can get from upgrading to .NET? This remainder of this article and the article that will follow will explain how. Which .NET features will benefit you?Before you can answer that question you need: 1) a fairly detailed list of the VB.NET, Visual Studio.NET, and .NET Framework features and 2) a basic idea of what can be done with each feature. Armed with your 'shopping list' and your new found knowledge about each .NET feature on the list, you will can select out the features that you feel will benefit you. To be beneficial to YOU a .NET feature must be 1) a superior way to do something that can already be done in VBC or 2) a new capability that is not available in VBC AND the feature must be must be something you need, or will need, in the not-too-distant future. Creating a .NET Features "Shopping List"The .NET feature list should not be too generic or it will 'hide' many .NET features. What does a generic list look like? As I write this there is a list of the top 10 features to upgrade to Visual Basic.NET 2003 on the "Microsoft Visual Basic Developers Center". It's a good example of a 'generic' list of VB.NET, Visual Studio.NET, and .NET Framework features. Top 10 Reasons to Adopt Visual Basic .NET 20031. NEW - Enhanced Visual Studio .NET IDE 2. NEW - Improved Debugging with IntelliSense 3. Build Applications for Windows 4. Build Applications for the Web 5. NEW - Build Applications for Mobile Web and Smart Devices 6. Visual Studio .NET 2003 now includes integrated support for the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework. 7. Trouble-free Deployment of Windows-based Applications 8. NEW - Target the Improved Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 9. NEW - Enhanced Upgrade Technology 10. Powerful, Flexible Data Access Next Issue: Creating YOUR Top 10 Reasons to Adopt Visual Basic .NET. http://blogs.vbcity.com/ The new Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET 2003 Professional Special Edition has tools to help you build high-performance Web applications.
Competition:
Competition Finished
The competion sponsored by Olvio IT has now closed and the three lucky winners have been contacted with their prize info. Many thanks to the folks at Olvio for donating the prizes and congratulations to the winners. Commiserations if you entered but haven't won this time; thre are more competitions to come later in the year so don't give up! http://www.olvio.com/devcitycompetition.aspx
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