Re: Writing my 1st VBS "Script Component"

"mayayana" wrote:

In script, though, MS has tried to make it very
easy, and the "Scripting Guys", the official MS script
experts, even recommend *against* setting objects
to Nothing! By implication they're recommending
that you not bother keeping track of memory usage
at all... that such things are not proper topics of
reflection for scripters.


If this is what they say, then they are not Scripting Guys,
are they? Their disrespect for "things-VB" bespeaks the
fact MS has lost control of their own organization. I am
sooooo sicked and tired of snobby little fruits often telling
me how inferior and unimportant are the tools I use to
solve problems for companies. The most absurd are the
claims to code re-use by C-Monsters versus VB and VBS.
It's interesting that by far the longest-lived applications
in my experience were VB3/5/6, VBScript, and HP Basic.
I knock 'em out in record time, and their maintenance is
assumed by senior techs or junior engineers with subject
matter expertise in something concrete. Meanwhile, the
C "engineers" (snicker) seem always to want to do a total
re-write of everything in every project they join. Plus
they want more money than other programmers. And
often they spread cultural discord in the organization.

My favorite examples are the stories I heard from Delta
Technologies here in Atlanta -- which I will not repeat. I
would say, however, this phenomenon seems to be the
worst when the religious mandates are edicts from
someone high up -- typically a self-important CTO who
subsequently loses the company a fortune in unnecessary
churning of strategies, plans, projects, and people.

Kind of like the way the new MS management is doing now...

I'd bet Bill Gates agrees with this view, privately. I had
a Microsoft Basic interpreter in ROM on my homemade
6502-base personal computer years before MSDOS came
out! I could do engineering work -NO-ONE- else could do
without a serious on-campus computer account. VB3 had the
same effect. While the C Team had meetings to discuss
esoteric programming nuances, the VB Team had meetings
to discuss getting tighter on the loop between board test and
the chip shooter -- and training managers to use the OLAP
report generator. Not enough MBAs measuring the results.


I don't use ASP, so I'm not certain about best methods,
but you mentioned using VB. Wouldn't it make more sense
to just make components in VB rather than start getting
into something as dubious as pseudo-COM registered text files?
I assume you'd get intellisense with an ActiveX DLL. It would
also be a great deal more efficient, if you have work-
intensive functions where speed matters.


You are so very right. It's obvious. I'm walking away from this
"Script Component" nonsense right now! You are so very right.

Still, I enjoy the convenience of VBScript in ASP Classic. But
having ASP-compatible and VBScript-compatible VB6 DLLs will
be a very nice mix. My VB6 stuff is where all my VBScript code
comes from anyway!

As you mentioned earlier, MS is phasing out a lot of
things, in their attempt to increase sales. But actually,
much of it is still going.

VBS is apparently being phased out, but there's a WSH
version for Vista.

VB6 is dead, but it's supported in Vista.

.Net has been going for 6 years now, and it's going nowhere
fast - allegedly designed for "web apps" that aren't happening
and supporting an ever-decreasing number of OSs.

COM is dead, but it's in Vista - which is more than can
be said for .Net. As I understand it, they put a couple of
token .Net files in Vista so that they could say it's in there,
but they knew better (or at least learned better) than to
build an operating system out of bloated, superfluous
wrappers on top of the API.

I suspect that the current endgame for .Net is simply
to kick out all 3rd-party programmers from the API into a
sandbox where Hollywood and music companies won't have
to worry about their DRM being fiddled with, and
advertisers won't have to worry about their ads being
blocked.

( http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070717-microsoft-patents-the-mother
-of-all-adware-systems.html )

I'm afraid the days of Windows as a viable OS are
numbered... Apparently there's just not enough
money in it. :)



I've always assumed I would eventually have to re-write
everything in VB.Net or C#.Net. But now you have me
wondering about that. From what I see, the two breeds of
software developers (those who addresses Enterprise IT
requirements versus those developing shrink-wrapped
software products) are now converging. The demand I see
for (real) programmers now is for Enterprise Java Beans.
I think I'm seeing a move toward huge multiprocessor
machines (UNIX and Windows) spawning as many Java
Virtual Machines as required to to use up the full potential
of these considerable capital assets. It's all SOA. And
the scalability of -EVERYTHING- is quite impressive indeed.
Plus, it works equally well in daytime interactive and in the
gianormous nighttime batch procressing often required in big
corporations these days.

Finally, with web browsers as the only client software
anyone [in Enterprise IT] uses anymore, we've come full-circle
to the architecture of mainframes (now, fully interactive and
multitasking) ...and terminals (but now with high def GUIs).
Where exactly is Microsoft going in this scenario? I wonder
about that a lot. And I really love Microsoft, too. I think they
need to continue their historical role of adding value where
value pays -- and not the mistaken strategy of technology and
software product shell games. Let the water into the niches,
the cracks, and let it freeze and open-up these niches into
full markets. Instead, I'm afraid that rocking the boat to pump
up sales will only cause us to want to jump ship altogether.

Thank you utterly a whole bunch for responding to this thread.
It has been a pleasure.

Cheers,

Jim Rodgers

.

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