I am involved in the Empower ISV Program. Microsoft began this program for
developers who are developing saleable products. Hence I(ndependent)
S(oftware) V(endor). Meeting the requirements can also enable developers to
become Certified Microsoft Partners. A MSDN Universal Subscription is
available to those who are accepted into the program as Microsoft Partners
[1].
As for my opinion regarding Visual Studio I would suggest you consider
starting with one of the Express [2] products and then migrate to Visual
Studio 2005 when it is RTM. My rationale for suggesting this approach is
simple; you are a VB6 developer and have a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, to
learn about VB.NET and developing using OOP in the context of the DNF. Do
that learning with one of the Express applications. Get the VS2005 beta 2
bits and install on a separate machine or use VPC with at least 2G RAM with
W2003 as the guest OS (IIS 6 is different than IIS 5.1 and optimized for
..NET development). You can get familiar with the 2.0 DNF while using one of
the Express applications to learn OOP using the 1.1 DNF. The architecture of
the code model is different between 1.1 and 2.0. You are going to need
competency understanding the 1.1 code model noting the 2.0 model is becoming
increasingly abstract with the object to go as RAD as possible as soon as
possible which brings about my final point.
Since now is the perfect time to reconsider, I would only recommend staying
with VB to my enemies or some of the deadbeats I know despite the arguments
that saying so is sure to attract noting I won't be bothering to respond as
its taking me enough time to respond tghe way it is. The smarter developers
IMO of course, understand that VB is being turned into a push-button monkey
code environment that within a couple years will be indistinguishable from
FrontPage monkeys. The 'management' and without question any 'customer' is
going to hear more and more frequently about how 2.0 requires VB developers
to write 70% less code and in many regards this is true even though it can
be discredited and we all know how shallow such marketing hype actually can
be. Get out your predicate logic books and look up 'fallacy of composition.'
The point being, the head monkeys and customers believe this fallcsious
bullsh!t, you will never get a chance to discredit Microsoft and will be
thought a fool for even bringing it up. You can bet your bippie the managing
monkeys and customers alike will start wondering why they should be paying
100% when it only takes 70% to produce even though some of them may have
development backgrounds themselves.
Finally, all modern languages are being derived from C and by all
appearances all languages developed in the foreseeable future will also
derive from C. Lexical syntax and grammer is C. You can easily verify this
trend if you have any gray matter at all. Try not to be short-sighted. Now
is the time to learn C# and use it to migrate your VB6 to .NET.
<%= Clinton Gallagher
METROmilwaukee (sm) "A Regional Information Service"
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL
http://metromilwaukee.com/
URL
http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/
[1]
http://partner.microsoft.com/
[2]
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/
"DaVBGuy" <Da*****@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:20**********************************@microsof t.com...
I'm currently using VB 6 for windows based apps. Should I make the jump
to
VS.2003 now, or should I wait till (the final) VS.2005 release comes out
later this year. If I have not started converting any of our code yet, is
it
worth while to wait for the 2005 final release to come out. I am not
interested in converting our VB6 apps to VS.2005 beta2 as there will be
some
changes between beta2 and the final release that will probably cause me
problems.
I'm just curious if the gains in vs.2005 will be that much better that I
should wait for it to come out, rather than invest dollars into vs.2003
and
then find out that it is quite inferior to vs.2005, if that is the case.
Any specific reasons that any of you can provide me for either case
(vs.2003
now versus vs.2005 when the final version comes out) will help me make a
recommendation to management.
Thank You