VB6 -> .NET Roadmap Questions

[Old VB6 Guy]

First of all, sorry if crossposting bothers you -- I don't normally do
it, but both of these groups seem relavant to my questions.

Alright, the time has finally come to make an investment in time and
money to jump start my career again. I am currently a VB6/ASP
programmer, but worse yet, I am in a company that has me doing (yuch!)
support work mostly and I get extremely limited programming "bones"
thrown to me these days. In short, I miss coding a WHOLE lot. So I
want to take the plunge and teach myself enough .NET skills and
concepts to fenagle my way through an interview and get on a different
track. These things are in my corner:

1. I am 47 years old and I have been a VB/ASP/Web programmer since
about 1994. IOW, I have lots of real world coding experience in a
variety of environements, albiet in a dying language set.

2. I have a solid foundational understanding of object oriented
concepts, and I am familiar with the way in which VB6 implemented
itself as object based, with interface inherintance and so on. I have
a fair bit of experience in older Java (JDK 1.1) development from my
college days (I graduated at 41 after 20+ years in the US Air Force)

3. I have Visual Studio Enterprise Architect Edition at my disposal to
learn with, both at work and at home. I also have books from O'Reilly
that cover ASP.Net, VB.Net and some Framework stuff for the original
..Net platform.

4. Although I love to program GUI and web stuff, my primary function
these past four years is that of a MS SQL Server 200 DBA. I have a
fail-over clustered environment that I am the soleproprietor of, and I
have scads of transact SQL experiance, along with DTS package design.
IOW, I am pretty database conversant.

So my questions are:

1. Is the version of 1.0 .NET good enough to get grounded in the
methodology, or is the newer 1.1 and/or 2.0 versions THAT much
different that I would be wasting my time?

2. Is certification as important as it once was? I am (was?) a
certified VB6 programmer, once on my way to the now defunct MCSD
certification. I quit when it hit the dinosaur listing.

3. Seeing as I am starting WELL behind the power curve, the choice of
language may be arbitrary now. I have a background (obviously) in VB6,
but I know that VB.Net is vastly different in many ways -- but it still
LOOKS sorta familiar. OTOH, given my limited experience in Java, C#
doesn't seem all that foreign to me and maybe it is more universally
adaptable? So which of these languages is in higher employer demand
these days, and along with that, can you do ASP.Net coding in either
(or any) .Net compliant language as you supposedly could in legacy ASP,
or is that a big fat lie again?

Sorry for the length, but I am deciding my future and it is an
important thing in my life -- at least warranting a decent question to
the community of my peers. Can you help a coding brother out here?

Will code for food...Old VB6 Guy

[carion1]

I was in the exact same boat you are in now. I ended up going with c# and I
have 0 regrets. I hated VB and that had a lot to do with my choice as well
lol. I really just wanted a complete change and I thought the similar parts
would just cause more problems during the initial transition. Pick the
syntax style you prefer and go with that. They are identical in terms of
features save a few things here and there.

The Visual Studio 2005 Express edition is currently free so you might want
to take a look at that. This year they are pretty much doing a complete
makeover of the certs so you may want to wait a bit on any decisions there.
My personal opinion of MS certs is very low (a poorly trained monkey could
achieve MCSD.NET imo) and I don't believe they carry much weight when job
hunting. I maintain mine simply because it is required for Certified
Partner.

--

Derek Davis
dd******@gmail. com

"Old VB6 Guy" <sm*******@yaho o.com> wrote in message
news:11******** **************@ g43g2000cwa.goo glegroups.com.. .

First of all, sorry if crossposting bothers you -- I don't normally do
it, but both of these groups seem relavant to my questions.

Alright, the time has finally come to make an investment in time and
money to jump start my career again. I am currently a VB6/ASP
programmer, but worse yet, I am in a company that has me doing (yuch!)
support work mostly and I get extremely limited programming "bones"
thrown to me these days. In short, I miss coding a WHOLE lot. So I
want to take the plunge and teach myself enough .NET skills and
concepts to fenagle my way through an interview and get on a different
track. These things are in my corner:

1. I am 47 years old and I have been a VB/ASP/Web programmer since
about 1994. IOW, I have lots of real world coding experience in a
variety of environements, albiet in a dying language set.

2. I have a solid foundational understanding of object oriented
concepts, and I am familiar with the way in which VB6 implemented
itself as object based, with interface inherintance and so on. I have
a fair bit of experience in older Java (JDK 1.1) development from my
college days (I graduated at 41 after 20+ years in the US Air Force)

3. I have Visual Studio Enterprise Architect Edition at my disposal to
learn with, both at work and at home. I also have books from O'Reilly
that cover ASP.Net, VB.Net and some Framework stuff for the original
.Net platform.

4. Although I love to program GUI and web stuff, my primary function
these past four years is that of a MS SQL Server 200 DBA. I have a
fail-over clustered environment that I am the soleproprietor of, and I
have scads of transact SQL experiance, along with DTS package design.
IOW, I am pretty database conversant.

So my questions are:

1. Is the version of 1.0 .NET good enough to get grounded in the
methodology, or is the newer 1.1 and/or 2.0 versions THAT much
different that I would be wasting my time?

2. Is certification as important as it once was? I am (was?) a
certified VB6 programmer, once on my way to the now defunct MCSD
certification. I quit when it hit the dinosaur listing.

3. Seeing as I am starting WELL behind the power curve, the choice of
language may be arbitrary now. I have a background (obviously) in VB6,
but I know that VB.Net is vastly different in many ways -- but it still
LOOKS sorta familiar. OTOH, given my limited experience in Java, C#
doesn't seem all that foreign to me and maybe it is more universally
adaptable? So which of these languages is in higher employer demand
these days, and along with that, can you do ASP.Net coding in either
(or any) .Net compliant language as you supposedly could in legacy ASP,
or is that a big fat lie again?

Sorry for the length, but I am deciding my future and it is an
important thing in my life -- at least warranting a decent question to
the community of my peers. Can you help a coding brother out here?

Will code for food...Old VB6 Guy

[Joseph Ferris]

Old VB6 Guy wrote:

1. Is the version of 1.0 .NET good enough to get grounded in the
methodology, or is the newer 1.1 and/or 2.0 versions THAT much
different that I would be wasting my time?
The differences between 1.0 and 1.1 are minimal, especially in
comparison to the differences between 1.x and 2.0. 2.0 is just coming
off the bleeding edge right now, but that doesn't make 1.x outdated.

If you have reference materials for 1.x, I would at least get started
with what you have. A lot of the fundamentals are the same in 2.0, but
there is a large emphasis on making it easier to develop with 2.0. At
least in my opinion, it is too early to render a verdict.
2. Is certification as important as it once was? I am (was?) a
certified VB6 programmer, once on my way to the now defunct MCSD
certification. I quit when it hit the dinosaur listing.
It is up in the air, really. You will see people argue both sides of
the issue. They don't seem to be as much "en vogue" as they were a few
years ago, but I don't think that they are completely without merit.

My problem with them is that they don't match the real world. As a
developer, I rely heavily on reference material. It keeps me honest,
and I can always cite why I did or didn't do something. Microsoft's
exams focus heavily on memorizing and stepping through trick questions.
3. Seeing as I am starting WELL behind the power curve, the choice of
language may be arbitrary now. I have a background (obviously) in VB6,
but I know that VB.Net is vastly different in many ways -- but it still
LOOKS sorta familiar. OTOH, given my limited experience in Java, C#
doesn't seem all that foreign to me and maybe it is more universally
adaptable? So which of these languages is in higher employer demand
these days, and along with that, can you do ASP.Net coding in either
(or any) .Net compliant language as you supposedly could in legacy ASP,
or is that a big fat lie again?
Honestly, my answer is "know both". Start with one that you feel more
comfortable in getting a working relationship with the framework. Once
you begin feeling comfortable, take the time to learn the other. I
went from a primarily C# position to a VB.Net position recently. I
spent my time getting to know the underlying framework better so that I
could put myself in that position if it came down to having to change
languages. Once you are comfortable with one, the change to the other
is not really that dramatic. ;-)
Sorry for the length, but I am deciding my future and it is an
important thing in my life -- at least warranting a decent question to
the community of my peers. Can you help a coding brother out here?

I hope I managed to help out a bit. Moving from VB6 to .Net was
daunting, at first. It isn't nearly as bad as the "doom and gloom"
developers in the VB6 community have made it out to be. Different?
Yes. Bad? No. (I also still use VB6 on the side for prototyping and
mockups, just because I can do it faster there. ;-) )

Joseph

[Old VB6 Guy]

Joseph Ferris wrote:

Old VB6 Guy wrote:

1. Is the version of 1.0 .NET good enough to get grounded in the
methodology, or is the newer 1.1 and/or 2.0 versions THAT much
different that I would be wasting my time?

The differences between 1.0 and 1.1 are minimal, especially in
comparison to the differences between 1.x and 2.0. 2.0 is just coming
off the bleeding edge right now, but that doesn't make 1.x outdated.

If you have reference materials for 1.x, I would at least get started
with what you have. A lot of the fundamentals are the same in 2.0, but
there is a large emphasis on making it easier to develop with 2.0. At
least in my opinion, it is too early to render a verdict.

2. Is certification as important as it once was? I am (was?) a
certified VB6 programmer, once on my way to the now defunct MCSD
certification. I quit when it hit the dinosaur listing.

It is up in the air, really. You will see people argue both sides of
the issue. They don't seem to be as much "en vogue" as they were a few
years ago, but I don't think that they are completely without merit.

My problem with them is that they don't match the real world. As a
developer, I rely heavily on reference material. It keeps me honest,
and I can always cite why I did or didn't do something. Microsoft's
exams focus heavily on memorizing and stepping through trick questions.

3. Seeing as I am starting WELL behind the power curve, the choice of
language may be arbitrary now. I have a background (obviously) in VB6,
but I know that VB.Net is vastly different in many ways -- but it still
LOOKS sorta familiar. OTOH, given my limited experience in Java, C#
doesn't seem all that foreign to me and maybe it is more universally
adaptable? So which of these languages is in higher employer demand
these days, and along with that, can you do ASP.Net coding in either
(or any) .Net compliant language as you supposedly could in legacy ASP,
or is that a big fat lie again?

Honestly, my answer is "know both". Start with one that you feel more
comfortable in getting a working relationship with the framework. Once
you begin feeling comfortable, take the time to learn the other. I
went from a primarily C# position to a VB.Net position recently. I
spent my time getting to know the underlying framework better so that I
could put myself in that position if it came down to having to change
languages. Once you are comfortable with one, the change to the other
is not really that dramatic. ;-)

Sorry for the length, but I am deciding my future and it is an
important thing in my life -- at least warranting a decent question to
the community of my peers. Can you help a coding brother out here?

I hope I managed to help out a bit. Moving from VB6 to .Net was
daunting, at first. It isn't nearly as bad as the "doom and gloom"
developers in the VB6 community have made it out to be. Different?
Yes. Bad? No. (I also still use VB6 on the side for prototyping and
mockups, just because I can do it faster there. ;-) )

Joseph

Thanks for the replies, they are very helpful. I am thinking that my
best bet is to use what I already have at my disposal, thereby making
my initial investment somewhere in the neighborhood of $0. Of course,
there is the time invested to be considered, but I would need to put in
the hours no matter what I choose -- even Java would be ground zero --
so I might as well see how elegant VB has become. Folks kept clamoring
for object oriented features and they got them, although in practice I
would bet that creating a full featured set of custom objects is no
small undertaking. Moreover, after reading Dan Appleman's book on
transitioning from VB 6 to the .NET world, he makes a strong case for
interface inheritance being a better choice in many cases. These are
the sorts of things that seem daunting to me really. Learning the
Framework will be a lot of effort for sure, but learning WHERE AND WHEN
is the best time to implement feature X is something that can't really
be short circuited I don't think.

Anyone out there aware of a website, roadmap or other helpful
informational site out in cyber space (like the Sun Java trails if you
are familiar with that) that might help make the transition a little
smoother?

[TrtnJohn]

To me the actual language you learn is really trivial compared to
understanding how the .NET framework works. If I were you I would just go
ahead and use VB.NET to start because it will be more familiar to you. The
sooner you start working with the framework the better off you will be.
Because of the .NET framework, there really is not much differences between
any of the .NET programming languages.

It is my personal opinion that Microsoft should obsolete either C# or
VB.NET. There really is no use to having both of them. I don't care which
one they kill. It seems pretty wasteful to have to support and document such
redundant functionality. I realize I am only ranting, of course. I do know
why they never will do such a thing. It is because of existing programmers
and their religious views of their language of choice. (It's all stupid IMO).

"Old VB6 Guy" wrote:

First of all, sorry if crossposting bothers you -- I don't normally do
it, but both of these groups seem relavant to my questions.

Alright, the time has finally come to make an investment in time and
money to jump start my career again. I am currently a VB6/ASP
programmer, but worse yet, I am in a company that has me doing (yuch!)
support work mostly and I get extremely limited programming "bones"
thrown to me these days. In short, I miss coding a WHOLE lot. So I
want to take the plunge and teach myself enough .NET skills and
concepts to fenagle my way through an interview and get on a different
track. These things are in my corner:

1. I am 47 years old and I have been a VB/ASP/Web programmer since
about 1994. IOW, I have lots of real world coding experience in a
variety of environements, albiet in a dying language set.

2. I have a solid foundational understanding of object oriented
concepts, and I am familiar with the way in which VB6 implemented
itself as object based, with interface inherintance and so on. I have
a fair bit of experience in older Java (JDK 1.1) development from my
college days (I graduated at 41 after 20+ years in the US Air Force)

3. I have Visual Studio Enterprise Architect Edition at my disposal to
learn with, both at work and at home. I also have books from O'Reilly
that cover ASP.Net, VB.Net and some Framework stuff for the original
..Net platform.

4. Although I love to program GUI and web stuff, my primary function
these past four years is that of a MS SQL Server 200 DBA. I have a
fail-over clustered environment that I am the soleproprietor of, and I
have scads of transact SQL experiance, along with DTS package design.
IOW, I am pretty database conversant.

So my questions are:

1. Is the version of 1.0 .NET good enough to get grounded in the
methodology, or is the newer 1.1 and/or 2.0 versions THAT much
different that I would be wasting my time?

2. Is certification as important as it once was? I am (was?) a
certified VB6 programmer, once on my way to the now defunct MCSD
certification. I quit when it hit the dinosaur listing.

3. Seeing as I am starting WELL behind the power curve, the choice of
language may be arbitrary now. I have a background (obviously) in VB6,
but I know that VB.Net is vastly different in many ways -- but it still
LOOKS sorta familiar. OTOH, given my limited experience in Java, C#
doesn't seem all that foreign to me and maybe it is more universally
adaptable? So which of these languages is in higher employer demand
these days, and along with that, can you do ASP.Net coding in either
(or any) .Net compliant language as you supposedly could in legacy ASP,
or is that a big fat lie again?

Sorry for the length, but I am deciding my future and it is an
important thing in my life -- at least warranting a decent question to
the community of my peers. Can you help a coding brother out here?

Will code for food...Old VB6 Guy

[Lebesgue]

> It is my personal opinion that Microsoft should obsolete either C# or

VB.NET. There really is no use to having both of them. I don't care
which
one they kill. It seems pretty wasteful to have to support and document
such
redundant functionality. I realize I am only ranting, of course. I do
know
why they never will do such a thing. It is because of existing
programmers
and their religious views of their language of choice. (It's all stupid
IMO).

This is not how .NET was meant to be. .NET (CLR namely) was designed to be
able to support as many languages as possible (there are over 40 at the
moment). And none of them is redundant. Every single is equally important,
because it gives the oportunity to code against the best platform in any
language - including Ruby, F#, P#, Python, Eiffel, Lisp, not just VB and C#.

"TrtnJohn" <Tr******@discu ssions.microsof t.com> wrote in message
news:D4******** *************** ***********@mic rosoft.com... To me the actual language you learn is really trivial compared to
understanding how the .NET framework works. If I were you I would just go
ahead and use VB.NET to start because it will be more familiar to you.
The
sooner you start working with the framework the better off you will be.
Because of the .NET framework, there really is not much differences
between
any of the .NET programming languages.

It is my personal opinion that Microsoft should obsolete either C# or
VB.NET. There really is no use to having both of them. I don't care
which
one they kill. It seems pretty wasteful to have to support and document
such
redundant functionality. I realize I am only ranting, of course. I do
know
why they never will do such a thing. It is because of existing
programmers
and their religious views of their language of choice. (It's all stupid
IMO).

"Old VB6 Guy" wrote:

First of all, sorry if crossposting bothers you -- I don't normally do
it, but both of these groups seem relavant to my questions.

Alright, the time has finally come to make an investment in time and
money to jump start my career again. I am currently a VB6/ASP
programmer, but worse yet, I am in a company that has me doing (yuch!)
support work mostly and I get extremely limited programming "bones"
thrown to me these days. In short, I miss coding a WHOLE lot. So I
want to take the plunge and teach myself enough .NET skills and
concepts to fenagle my way through an interview and get on a different
track. These things are in my corner:

1. I am 47 years old and I have been a VB/ASP/Web programmer since
about 1994. IOW, I have lots of real world coding experience in a
variety of environements, albiet in a dying language set.

2. I have a solid foundational understanding of object oriented
concepts, and I am familiar with the way in which VB6 implemented
itself as object based, with interface inherintance and so on. I have
a fair bit of experience in older Java (JDK 1.1) development from my
college days (I graduated at 41 after 20+ years in the US Air Force)

3. I have Visual Studio Enterprise Architect Edition at my disposal to
learn with, both at work and at home. I also have books from O'Reilly
that cover ASP.Net, VB.Net and some Framework stuff for the original
..Net platform.

4. Although I love to program GUI and web stuff, my primary function
these past four years is that of a MS SQL Server 200 DBA. I have a
fail-over clustered environment that I am the soleproprietor of, and I
have scads of transact SQL experiance, along with DTS package design.
IOW, I am pretty database conversant.

So my questions are:

1. Is the version of 1.0 .NET good enough to get grounded in the
methodology, or is the newer 1.1 and/or 2.0 versions THAT much
different that I would be wasting my time?

2. Is certification as important as it once was? I am (was?) a
certified VB6 programmer, once on my way to the now defunct MCSD
certification. I quit when it hit the dinosaur listing.

3. Seeing as I am starting WELL behind the power curve, the choice of
language may be arbitrary now. I have a background (obviously) in VB6,
but I know that VB.Net is vastly different in many ways -- but it still
LOOKS sorta familiar. OTOH, given my limited experience in Java, C#
doesn't seem all that foreign to me and maybe it is more universally
adaptable? So which of these languages is in higher employer demand
these days, and along with that, can you do ASP.Net coding in either
(or any) .Net compliant language as you supposedly could in legacy ASP,
or is that a big fat lie again?

Sorry for the length, but I am deciding my future and it is an
important thing in my life -- at least warranting a decent question to
the community of my peers. Can you help a coding brother out here?

Will code for food...Old VB6 Guy

[Joseph Ferris]

Lebesgue wrote:

This is not how .NET was meant to be. .NET (CLR namely) was designed to be
able to support as many languages as possible (there are over 40 at the
moment). And none of them is redundant. Every single is equally important,
because it gives the oportunity to code against the best platform in any
language - including Ruby, F#, P#, Python, Eiffel, Lisp, not just VB and C#.

And one of my sentimental favorites... Fujitsu NetCOBOL for .Net. ;-)

http://www.netcobol.com/products/windows/netcobol.html

Joseph

[Michael D. Ober]

You can get the express editions of the .NET 2.0 languages for free.
Download the "Manual" installs and ISO Buster to create your cd images. My
images are on disk, not CD. You don't even have to register the "Manual"
installation images.

Mike Ober.

"> Thanks for the replies, they are very helpful. I am thinking that my

best bet is to use what I already have at my disposal, thereby making
my initial investment somewhere in the neighborhood of $0. Of course,
there is the time invested to be considered, but I would need to put in
the hours no matter what I choose -- even Java would be ground zero --
so I might as well see how elegant VB has become. Folks kept clamoring
for object oriented features and they got them, although in practice I
would bet that creating a full featured set of custom objects is no
small undertaking. Moreover, after reading Dan Appleman's book on
transitioning from VB 6 to the .NET world, he makes a strong case for
interface inheritance being a better choice in many cases. These are
the sorts of things that seem daunting to me really. Learning the
Framework will be a lot of effort for sure, but learning WHERE AND WHEN
is the best time to implement feature X is something that can't really
be short circuited I don't think.

Anyone out there aware of a website, roadmap or other helpful
informational site out in cyber space (like the Sun Java trails if you
are familiar with that) that might help make the transition a little
smoother?

[TrtnJohn]

I see things a little differently. I think .NET is designed to speed up
development effort and to unify application development under a single
framework. As such, whatever language you use is really irrelevant. The
fact that there are multiple different languages can only slow down
development as it increases the learning curve to program using the
framework. The original post in this thread is a perfect example of this.
He can't decide between VB and C# or both. Creating and updating
applications using the .NET framework should not require learning 2 or more
programming languages. Especially since neither have any real inherent
advantages.

"Lebesgue" wrote:

It is my personal opinion that Microsoft should obsolete either C# or
VB.NET. There really is no use to having both of them. I don't care
which
one they kill. It seems pretty wasteful to have to support and document
such
redundant functionality. I realize I am only ranting, of course. I do
know
why they never will do such a thing. It is because of existing
programmers
and their religious views of their language of choice. (It's all stupid
IMO).

This is not how .NET was meant to be. .NET (CLR namely) was designed to be
able to support as many languages as possible (there are over 40 at the
moment). And none of them is redundant. Every single is equally important,
because it gives the oportunity to code against the best platform in any
language - including Ruby, F#, P#, Python, Eiffel, Lisp, not just VB and C#.

"TrtnJohn" <Tr******@discu ssions.microsof t.com> wrote in message
news:D4******** *************** ***********@mic rosoft.com...

To me the actual language you learn is really trivial compared to
understanding how the .NET framework works. If I were you I would just go
ahead and use VB.NET to start because it will be more familiar to you.
The
sooner you start working with the framework the better off you will be.
Because of the .NET framework, there really is not much differences
between
any of the .NET programming languages.

It is my personal opinion that Microsoft should obsolete either C# or
VB.NET. There really is no use to having both of them. I don't care
which
one they kill. It seems pretty wasteful to have to support and document
such
redundant functionality. I realize I am only ranting, of course. I do
know
why they never will do such a thing. It is because of existing
programmers
and their religious views of their language of choice. (It's all stupid
IMO).

"Old VB6 Guy" wrote:

First of all, sorry if crossposting bothers you -- I don't normally do
it, but both of these groups seem relavant to my questions.

Alright, the time has finally come to make an investment in time and
money to jump start my career again. I am currently a VB6/ASP
programmer, but worse yet, I am in a company that has me doing (yuch!)
support work mostly and I get extremely limited programming "bones"
thrown to me these days. In short, I miss coding a WHOLE lot. So I
want to take the plunge and teach myself enough .NET skills and
concepts to fenagle my way through an interview and get on a different
track. These things are in my corner:

1. I am 47 years old and I have been a VB/ASP/Web programmer since
about 1994. IOW, I have lots of real world coding experience in a
variety of environements, albiet in a dying language set.

2. I have a solid foundational understanding of object oriented
concepts, and I am familiar with the way in which VB6 implemented
itself as object based, with interface inherintance and so on. I have
a fair bit of experience in older Java (JDK 1.1) development from my
college days (I graduated at 41 after 20+ years in the US Air Force)

3. I have Visual Studio Enterprise Architect Edition at my disposal to
learn with, both at work and at home. I also have books from O'Reilly
that cover ASP.Net, VB.Net and some Framework stuff for the original
..Net platform.

4. Although I love to program GUI and web stuff, my primary function
these past four years is that of a MS SQL Server 200 DBA. I have a
fail-over clustered environment that I am the soleproprietor of, and I
have scads of transact SQL experiance, along with DTS package design.
IOW, I am pretty database conversant.

So my questions are:

1. Is the version of 1.0 .NET good enough to get grounded in the
methodology, or is the newer 1.1 and/or 2.0 versions THAT much
different that I would be wasting my time?

2. Is certification as important as it once was? I am (was?) a
certified VB6 programmer, once on my way to the now defunct MCSD
certification. I quit when it hit the dinosaur listing.

3. Seeing as I am starting WELL behind the power curve, the choice of
language may be arbitrary now. I have a background (obviously) in VB6,
but I know that VB.Net is vastly different in many ways -- but it still
LOOKS sorta familiar. OTOH, given my limited experience in Java, C#
doesn't seem all that foreign to me and maybe it is more universally
adaptable? So which of these languages is in higher employer demand
these days, and along with that, can you do ASP.Net coding in either
(or any) .Net compliant language as you supposedly could in legacy ASP,
or is that a big fat lie again?

Sorry for the length, but I am deciding my future and it is an
important thing in my life -- at least warranting a decent question to
the community of my peers. Can you help a coding brother out here?

Will code for food...Old VB6 Guy