Denaes

hmmm, Virtual PC running Linux. Might be what I'm looking for to try linux out. It struck me as quite humorous in the knowledge base, seeing Microsoft giving tech support on Linux :p Actually I was just thinking how frickin awesome it would be if you could install Virtual PC over a VERY barebones OS. I mean like Old Skool DOS, bare bones in terms of resources. Then you could use the program as an interface and install whatever OS you want. It would be a slight performance hit running your primary OS (2000, XP, 98, etc) as it would be virtual, but being able to press Alt+Tab and flip between Linux, OS X and Windows 2000 really has me interested. I don't know if OSX works, it says any x386 compatable OS, which OS Anything isn't. But the Mac version of Virtual PC runs x386 programs. I don't see why the PC version couldn't do the reverse. Instead of having one OS tightly integrated into your system, you'd have 2+ OS's lightly (but equally) integrated into your system. Get a 100+ gig hard drive, 700something megs of ram (what comes after 512?) and a 2ghz proccessor and you'd be set to run any OS you'd like, or multiple at once. I think that would be really killer for developing cross platform software, testing compatability... As it stands right now, if Virtual PC for Windows can't run OS X by the time a .Net Framework comes out for OS X, I'm going to switch to a G4 or G5 powerbook/titanium and run windows virtually. Is it really healthy to enjoy developing software for an OS that you don't really prefer? I mean I have like zero interest in OS X software for some reason. I don't even know what langauge you'd write it in. C/C++? Smarttalk? ::shrugs::

wow. Thats the only reason I'd consider using OS X, is pretty much because you can run a virtual PC on it, letting you run PC and Mac stuff. If PC can do the opposite, that would be sweet :) I'll have to look into this, thanks for the heads up :D

So, with a different compiler, C++ and C might be in totally different places? I've heard that the .Net languages don't compile the same, are they technically using the same compiler or does each language have its own compiler, but each modeled on a single outline?

Thats interesting... VC++.Net outperformed everything, including C!? I thought C was supposed to be faster. C# outperformed C also. Everything but VC++.Net. Strange. That was interesting. So even though .Net is supposed to compile all the same way at the same speed, C# ran faster than J# and VB.Net Far from a thurough benchmark, but it does show some math and IO comparisons.

Nothing to do with programming at all. I just got a LOT of older games. Space Quests, Kings Quests, old D&D games, etc. I want to play them, but they're full screen games. I'd much prefer to play them in a windowed mode. Since they're being emulated through DOS and not using directX, isn't there a way to force them to play in a window?

I had that problem at work before I installed .Net. I was running XP Pro with 512mb of ram and I was trying to work at the speed I do at home: Select, delete, enter, gone. Well now it was select, delete, enter, opening files, error trying to delete open files, once files are open close them, then try again more slowly.

Some flavour of C is the majority. C, C++, VC++ and then there are other variations that I don't know the names off off hand. Why doesn't everyone use C#? It has many advantages, but some major disadvantages. 1. Currently, its platform specific. To be even more specific, windows with the .Net framework installed on it. Now, in the future we should see .Net frameworks ported over to other platforms. There is a java based .Net framework for OS X either out or comming soon. There is also at least one version for Linux being developed. Also there is a very stripped down version of the framework on a linux distrobution for aspx (ASP.Net) support. Now, this disadvantage quickly becomes an advantage. Once the framework spreads, your app will work on all platforms universally. Now, I think there are going to be some down n dirty OS specific incompatabilities... IE, if you make a program to do disk management for PC, many options may not have Mac equivilants. Currently (that I'm aware of), you have to write C for a specific platform, then port over any system specific changes. Not a huge deal if done properly using OOP principles. 2. C# is a higher level programming language. You can write your own OS in C (or C++). It can do that. It can get into memory and start playing with really fine stuff. Not as fine as Assember (::shudders::) I'd assume, but much lower than .Net You can make your own bootable programs in C. Unless they come up with a .Net framework for a computers Bios, I wouldn't bet on that sort of benefit for C#. 3. Speed. All optimizations and competent programming granted, .Net runs, on average, just a little faster or a little slower than vb6. vb6 can be routinely trounced by the various flavours of C. So, if you NEED more speed than .Net can give, C or C++ might be a better fit. There is also speed of programming. From what I gather, C's lower levelness comes at a huge price. You have to start at a lower level and work your way up. Apparently C++ helped in that aspect a bit and I'm sure there are classes and packages out there to help you get some rapid development in. I have negligable experience programming in C, so I can't rightly compare. But since VB6's advantage over C was its speed of development - especially database, and .Net is more comparable to vb6 in its application development, I'd say C# would be faster to develop in than C or C++. I don't think C or C++ really has .Net's componant drag n drop features. I know VC++ had a flavour of it and it was clunky compared to VB6. 4. .Net is a single language. .Net is basically a single language with VB, C#, J#, etc being more like dialects within the language. I don't know much C# at all, but I can look at a code example in C# and know immedietly whats going on. I gather that C# has a few more options that VB doesn't have directly, but not too many. Thats not all. ASP used to be an internet scripting language. Now its a .Net language. Better yet, you can code ASPX (or ASP.Net) in VB, C#, J#, etc. Once you know C#, you all you have to do is learn the internet specific functions, procedures and componants and you can program in your C#. **** Whats going to happen when Microsoft releases its' .Net native Operating System? Right now the .Net framework itself is like an inbetween laying ontop of the OS. This is a gobetween. I'm imagining the speed once its native...

Anyone know which versions of VB.Net can create componants? I have vb.net standard and educational and I seem to be lacking that option on the project list. Is that a professional or studio only thing?

for something similar, I'm using the C1 componant "Classic Flexgrid" It allows you to have column or row headers if you wish, choose as many columns as you want and keep your data seperate. If you're just displaying, then concatonating the informationg like shown in the above post is perfect. If you're going to let someone select the data, you either have to go on the index (fat chance if you're sorting the data) or a search based on the item's text. Two items, like first and last name seperated by a comma are easy to extract the first and last name for a search. If you have more information (like I do), its easier to just give each item its own column so you can sort by any of the items (first name, last name, ID#, address, zip code, time, etc) at any time, on the fly. Displaying non-unique data (like names) in a sorted list has always been a headache of mine when trying to keep it attached to other data. Aside from creating arrays of unique objects, the flex grid is the best option I've seen, right next to the Datagrid if you have the proper input (database/xml/dataset). Good Luck

One of the first songs I remember really getting into was Friday I'm in Love. We even had it played at my wedding this last summer. I have the CD for Standing on the Beach - The Singles. I don't think it's tape only. Thats the one that had Sorry Wrong Number on it and the cover had Robert Smith as a baby on the beach for the cover? All the music I listen to, my wife hates. She swears she's more open minded than I am, but in reality she just says she is. I'm truthful. There are some genres I don't like as a rule, like rap, hip hop and country. There are exceptions, but thats a general rule. My wife says she likes everything if its good. I guess that means she's by far more openminded, and likes 80's new wave, punk, classic rock, goth, ebm, country, industrial, synthpop, etc, but just doesn't happen to think any of it is good, because she es if she has to listen to a single song of those genres. I think the only stations I can normally stand are the ones that play classic rock music, new music with classic musicians and alternative. Most everything else I like is secluded to random shows at 1am or never heard on the radio. Damn, illegal or not (I'm not touching that one), I LOVE mp3s. I have some few hundred CDs, and each and every one of them is on my external hard drive. I buy a cd, it goes straight into my cd player in my car on the way home - then into my computer to rip the songs. From there, it probobly sits for all eternity in a rack until someone borrows it and probobly looses/keeps it. I have an Archos MP3 player the size of a thick wallet that holds 20gb of music and doubles as an external hard drive with a FAT 16 file system which is handy for going from PC to Mac and back. No longer is my car a mess of CDs pulled out of binders and strewn all about, scratched and soiled. No more piles of CDs near my stereo or computer, just inconspicious RCA jacks for plugging my lil mp3 player into, nomatter where I am. I've had it for over a year and a half and I consider it one of my soundest investments. Its acting up recently... I'll catch hell from my wife if I go out and get another one. I hope its just the batteries. Oh well, if not, the new version has twice the hard drive space and plays DivX movies :D

The main difference that they're getting at is that it may not come with the .dll runtime files. Unless they totally screw the previous .dll scheme, which I don't think is possible without offending 95% of the software developers and rendering their software incompatable with "longhorn", VB6 apps would run so long as the .dlls are present. I suppose since MS is making the OS, they could go out of their way to purposely disable those .dlls, rendering them inert... but that would seem pretty stupid for the waste of time and preventing compatability. >>Edit<< Is this "Longhorn" going to be the .Net Framework Native OS? If so, wouldn't that make anything .Net run easier, better, faster, etc? Or even open up more options to program by since its not a collection of wrappers, but the OS itself? This isn't the rumored OS were Microsoft was going to start removing peoples choices of downloads and running files "in the name of virus protection", is it?

Do you mean you want to have a textbox match the value in a database field, or you want to peform some action and make the textbox the value? You can do it without a dataset, but I havn't tried in months since I AM using a dataset, so I'll go that route: You can do it in code, but thats a lot longer. I'd say just open up Server Explorer, get a new connection. If its not SQL Server (like Jet/MDB/Access) click back and select the Jet method and locate it on your hard drive. Once you fill in the options, you'll see the database connection in the Server Explorer. Drag the table you want to use over to the form you're using. The table and connection will create icons and all the proper connection strings. At this point, I'd give them more meaningful names. I'll use cnConnection and daAdatper for the example. Also dsDataset for the dataset. in the public declaration: private dsDataset as Dataset then create a procedure: Private Sub FillDataset() dsDataset = New DataSet daDataset.fill(dsDataset, "Tablename") End Sub From here, you have two options. One is to automatically set the binding. In public Declaration: Public cmCustNav As CurrencyManager 'CurrencyManager basically manages which record you're on Then link it to the textbox in a procedure (button, form load, etc): Textbox1.DataBindings.Add("Text", .dsDataset.Table("tableName"), "CustomerStatus") 'Link a curreny manager to ease code writing cmCustNav = Me.BindingContext(.dsDataset.Table("tableName")) Now, no matter what, textbox1 will show you what is in the current index of the database. You can navigate to get the right data basically like this: Private Sub btnCustNavFirst_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) cmCustNav.Position = 0 End Sub Private Sub btnCustNavPrev_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) cmCustNav.Position -= 1 End Sub Private Sub btnCustNavNext_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) cmCustNav.Position += 1 End Sub Another way to do it, is saying you have a dataset populated with data, put this in a procedure: textbox1.text = dsDataSet.Table("Tablename").row(Index).item("name")[code=visualbasic] or something like that. I can't say off hand since I'm not using that at the moment. Hope that at least helped some

Directory is a technical term. Folder was the term Macintosh/Apple coined for a visual reference to a directory back when PC was still in DOS (pre-windows). Personally I use directory, just because I remember using DOS, which usually had Directory in a command (ie, cd stood for change directory) and VB programming uses Directory, not folder. I too have the problem with my wife (who uses Mac), when I tell her to click on the "Denaes Directory" she has no clue and I need to correct myself "Denaes Folder".

I asked the same exact question. I want to do 100% normal .net programming, but on a PPC. The thread I posted here came to the same conclusion that its not possible. I wish...

I like the fact that I know not a single line of code in ASP, but ASP.Net seems more like an advanced topic in VB.Net (or C#.net) rather than its own seperate language. On that note, its nice being able to look at C# and recognize most of the code. The only thing thats annoying is that 2000 and some XP systems don't come standard with the framework (though my XP home system did) so its a hassle with people who try your program and don't want to download the framework. On that note of the framework, I think .Net is only good now. Its going to be great once Linux and Mac gets their own framework and a programming interface. Between .Net and Macromedia, I'd prefer OS X (not anything earlier!!!) to PCs to develop on primarily, but .Net is holding me with the PC currently.

On another thread someone mentioned Firebird as a free alternative to Access and SQL Server, also having a set of .Net wrappers. I think this looks interesting, but where can I find it? I googled for it, but got a long long list of many people offering Firebird. I'm not sure which version is reccomended. It was also mentioned that it had a steep learning curve. In comparison to what? Access? SQL Server? Does it have good documentation? support community? Any information is appreciates :)

Damn. I'm getting flashbacks of my first job. I was being paid $100 to upload a professors site. Thats it. Nothing more. Turned out he had a domain name, but no server. I even offered a few servers. NO, he found his own. I ended up having to configure the server to work with his domain name. Then it turned out that he only had pictures that he wanted me to upload, he had no site. It took 9 appointments for me to get the pictures. He kept forgetting them or missing the appointment. After I finally got the site up and running, got my "easy" $100, it turns out that he had done the stupidist thing possible. He was paying the server by the month - and by check! Needless to say his site was shut down for a missed payment rather quickly with this guys responsability record. Then he came to me with his problem and didn't know what to do, even after I'd advised him to either pay yearly (cheaper usually) or put it on a credit/debit card to be charged monthly. Right now I'm doing a site for a guy who keeps asking me hows it going. My reply - every day is: "I"m still waiting for the product or pictures of the product and the sales pitch/advertising text you want on the site. I can't continue without any of that" and he gives me a lowbrow look and nods "I'll bring in the product". "And the text. I need to know what you want to say. Not paraphrases or keywords, what you want to appear on the site." then he just looks confused and I know I've gotten into another situation were I know I'll end up doing more work than I'm paid for and/or this project will just be going on way too long.

Wow. This thread is like a class they should have offered in college. A little bit of history, a little bit of experience, a little bit of financial/job advice... I was working in a hotel at the Front Desk in Portland Oregon in 1998-99. We'd constantly be getting people in who had construction backgrounds who were being hired by this one NY based company to do remodeling and Y2K upgrading. This is before I even started my computer degree and I was helping out some of them with computer issues. They were shoved through a computer training course (I think a week long) and given a certificate by the company, thus they were certified Y2K contractors. They kept telling me that I should be in computers, which kind of got me thinking about it. Nersus: When you say draw up a contract, do you mean that as in, "Lets call our lawyers?" or just basically, lets get it in writing? Especially since I'm just starting out in most of these respects, I'm still keeping my day job. Now, as funny as it is, I feel really guilty about it because my day job is a pretty pathetic job right now. I work for a mostly seasonal bus company, either front desk or reservations year round and as a trip host during the summer months. Now right now its dead. Most people are cut back in hour a lot, but I have seniority over most. I bring in my laptop and work my computer project. The owner doesn't care in the least so long as it doesn't interfere with operations or my work. So I work on my program inbetween customers and I usually get about 5-6 hours done at work in an 8 hour shift. Its like I'm getting paid for my program twice. In your opinion, is it better to just sell someone a program lock, stock and barrel, or to write a program and keep the rights, basically liscensing it to a customer for a percentage of their sales? The later is the way I'm doing this program. The only part I'm worried about is that currently I'm active in the company, but even if I should leave (for whatever the reason) I should still be getting my percentage. But for a small company, whats to keep them honest? They could sell it 50 times and tell me it sold 10 times. This is a small company that believes in percentages, oftentimes because we charge different rates to different customers. Almost everything in the company (web design mostly) is a once only job. You do it, it sells once. You might be doing upgrades for them at a later date. My program is going to be the first exception to that sell it once rule, because it can be sold to many companies as is, and many more with only minor modifications.

I know a bit about Access and next to nothing about SQL Server. The huge price tag has prevented me from even wanting to learn it if the customer would have to have SQL Server as well. IE, its not what I'm looking for. But this firebird. It looks interesting. You can use it like an Access file directly, but can also run it off a server? If you run it directly from the database file (like access) is it faster or slower than a .mdb file would be? I found a few links to a "Firebird Database", could you help me figure out which is the correct (best?) one? I found: firebird.sourceforge.net/ http://www.ems-hitech.com/pages/firebirddatabase/index.php You said there were .net wrappers and a high learning curve (compared to what, sql server?), is there much documentation/boards to help out with this learning?

:D Something about that just sent me into a fit of laughter and really put into perspective how important security is and how we can often stand behind a paper shield thinking we're safe. Can you give someone (or a program) permission to modify+read the data in the database without giving them permission to do said nasty things to the file itself?

Ok, this is a profession which will take at least a year of study to gain profincy enough to make it a job. Most likely you'll end up getting an associates degree (2yr), Bachelors Degree (4yr) or Masters Degree (5yr?). Some will just buy a "Teach yourself Visual Basic" book to pick up basics and go from there. So how much would you think an educated profession would pay? I know pet groomers who learn their trade in weeks (not master status, but being a master programmer could take years or even decades) and get paid $20+ an hour. I know my friend who knows how to play the keyboard (amongst other things, he's a in a reagae group) and can charge $60 dollars an hour for keyboarding lessons. But in my experience, a lot of people balk at computer programming, web design and just general computer prices. I own my own lil buisiness. Its mostly a side gig which I handle all of my computer related transactions though. I get people who want me to come to their house, set up a system, figure out what componants they need switched (got a USB scanner, but an old arse win98pc), etc. Then I tell them that Its $50 an hour (on average) and quote them that thats an hours work. Now it could be more or less. I also have to travel there. These people either freak out "I thought it would be like $10 an hour!" :rolleyes: or be like "But that only took 29 minutes, so I'll only pay half". I'm sorry, I make $10 an hour at my day job. I don't think its worth a Value Meal at McDonalds to drive to someones house and deal with their 8 year old system. As of now, I'm fed up with people who think that a job is worth an actual hourly wage. I won't even mention the word hour anymore. You get all of these wage slaves who get paid for their warm body filling a slot for a certain number of hours and they get numb to professions which don't charge by the hour. The other day I'm at my day job and another employee sees me with my laptop. "Can you make a website?" he asks. "Sure I can. Its $50 a page as a basic rate. Maybe less if its really basic, maybe more if its complex. Adding in any programming will make it much more expensive" So he tells me that its not so bad. He tells me roughly what he wants, I open up dreamweaver and make a rough layout of what he described with ipso facto text. "Thats it? I could do that! How can you charge $50 for that?" :mad: Now I don't particularily like this guy and its looking like he's backing out and insulting my work/eductation. "You can do it? Then do it. Go to school for 2 years, put in more than the average amount of work to be at the top of the class, pay 7000 for college and forget about a steady fulltime job, so cut an additional 8000 a year off your yearly income. Buy the software for close to a thousand dollars and a laptop for 1,500. Then you can design a basic web page for a customer in 15 minutes. But the customer won't know exactly what they want on the page and will take days to get their content to you and probbobly ask you to change things 2 or 3 times. Then you can discuss with them why they want to underpay you for all of your education and expenses." He looked kind of dumbstruck for a second and decided that he could find someone cheaper to make a website for the product he's trying to sell. I'm not sure which part is scary, that he's trying to sell something and balking at 50 dollars for his advertising or that I"m sure someone out there will do it for less. Thats one thing that has surprised me recently. I'm doing a programming project which would probobly take some of you guys like a few nights, but takes me much longer because I need to learn ado.net to do it. I'm getting some decent pay for this and learning things I need to learn anyways. In my internet searching, I've found "Rent-a-coder" type services which frankly scare the hell out of me. I'm seeing an ad looking for a programmer who is fully top notch and professional with experience doing werehouse database tracking AND with examples as a resume to do a fully custom programming job. Now it said the bid was 250 dollars. I don't know if they expected to pay someone "top notch" 250 dollars to do this or if someone actually agreed to do it for 250 dollars. I don't know which one is scarier. I don't know if I'd sell a program I'd written for warehouse tracking (non custom, already been written and finished) for 250. I understand the concept of experienced programmers and work. You already have much of the work done and can probobly lift much of it into another project. Also experience is speed. What has taken me almost two weeks to do, if I had to do it over again (or something similar) I could do in a single night. But $250? If you can get done in like 4 or 5 hours... I can see how a project you think is easy turns into trouble - and time. Anyone else have any positive or negative experience freelancing? Any good practices? Mistakes? Does a programmer need to sell their soul to a corporation to make a solid living programming?

If anyone cares, I think I found the problem. I was doing a batch update to the database - but not refreshing the dataset. What the dataset would assign as an ID of 4 the database would give a 3 - which would get in the way of the relationship. I changed the updating procedure from one general one which updated them all at once, to one that passed a datatable into the procedure, updates the database with only that table and then refreshes the dataset which was updated.

Anyone? Anyone have any ideas or knowledge of relational database updating? Should I have relationships in my typed dataset as well? Should I be querrying and updating the relationship rather than individual tables? Updating/Inserting the child table is just fine. I just have troubles with the parent table. I'll choose a valid id value that exists on the related child table and I get the above error in my first post. Anyone have a sample program, tutorial or knowledge to help out? Please?

Ok, I thought I was getting the hang of things. I think SQL is pretty simple when you use it to do pretty simple things. Then VB.Net goes and throws me for a loop. I used the Server Explorer to connect to my database and dragged the connection and data adapter onto my form, it generates the SQL itself. Now I don't use these components because I need my adaptors available pupblicly, not form level, but not having to type out 15 fieldnames in some cases. This is my personal SQL statement to delete a row: "DELETE FROM AppUser WHERE AppUserID = ?" Then I configure the parameter for AppUserID. This is what was automatically generated by the data adaptor: "DELETE FROM Instructors WHERE (InstructorID = ?) " & _ "AND (Address = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Address IS NULL) AND " & _ "(AvailabilityNotes = ? OR ? IS NULL AND AvailabilityNotes IS NULL) " & _ "AND (Available_Friday = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Available_Friday IS NULL) " & _ "AND (Available_Monday = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Available_Monday IS NULL) " & _ "AND (Available_Saturday = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Available_Saturday IS NULL) " & _ "AND (Available_Sunday = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Available_Sunday IS NULL) AND " & _ "(Available_Thursday = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Available_Thursday IS NULL) AND " & _ "(Available_Tuesday = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Available_Tuesday IS NULL) AND " & _ "(Available_Wedsday = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Available_Wedsday IS NULL) AND " & _ "(City = ? OR ? IS NULL AND City IS NULL) AND (Contact01 = ? OR ? IS NULL " & _ "AND Contact01 IS NULL) AND (Contact02 = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Contact02 IS NULL) " & _ "AND (Contact03 = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Contact03 IS NULL) AND (FirstName = ? OR ? " & _ "IS NULL AND FirstName IS NULL) AND (HourlyRate = ? OR ? IS NULL AND HourlyRate IS NULL) " & _ "AND (LastName = ? OR ? IS NULL AND LastName IS NULL) AND (State = ? OR ? IS NULL " & _ "AND State IS NULL) AND (Status = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Status IS NULL) AND (Title = ? " & _ "OR ? IS NULL AND Title IS NULL) AND (Zip = ? OR ? IS NULL AND Zip IS NULL)" followed by no less than 40 parameters. And this is for a table with like 15 fields. Is there a reason for this much code to delete a row from the table? This is really scaring me. I know updating and inserting have a bit of code, but deleting and selection? I've also noticed that VB.Net will select every single field of the table individually rather than just using a *. Can anyone shed any light on this?

And having to requery your database for every single procedure to get more/different results is going to be pretty bad for your performance. I think there is some relevent data that you would want to keep in your dataset if you use it enough, and at that point it would be better to have all of the data that you'll use repeditivly on hand. From there you might want to filter or extract that data further without requerying the database.