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Admin
I have it on good authority that this application did exist (and may have been used by more than one school board/division). In this particular one, it was replaced by something even worse: Maplewood
Admin
[/quote]After blowing over $10,000 on the project just to go back to pen-and-paper[/quote]
They wanted to build 5 major apps from scratch, and only had a budget of $10k? Isn't that the real WTF? Just the QA on those apps would cost you $10k if you did it right.
Admin
No, shitty code is the sign of a poor developer. Recognizing a dead-end tool and avoiding it is the sign of a rational developer.
Admin
Nice try, AMerrickanGirl! Next time only pretend to be one mythical creature at a time - few of us wizened Internet folks believe in good VB developers and even fewer in women who would talk to us. Sorry, the empirical evidence is against you on this one.
<insert>evil grin</insert>
Admin
Isn't that a pretty respectable amount for a solo developer now?
Admin
Does it embiggen the smallest man?
Admin
I agree with you, it's just common knowledge that it's easier for an idiot to pick up VB and Drag n Drop stupid directly onto a form. C++, and Java...not so much. C# though..oh god.
Admin
Doesn't sound like a very cisual developer to me, from the description of the GUI.
Admin
Shitty code has been written in every language. How much have you actually worked with Visual Basic? I spent years developing apps with VB6 and it was the right tool for the jobs in which we used it. While other people were wasting their time bashing the language, I was getting the job done and meeting deadlines.
VB.NET is probably pointless, but I've long since jumped off that ship and thus can't say.
Admin
The moment I read "Access" I knew there'd be a horrific tale about networks and performance.
One of the applications I worked on used Access (it being able to be password protected was the reason given for this design decision). Now local performance wasn't bad (BDE + MS JET runtime), but when having to access the central database across a 64 kbit line performance tended to suffer a bit. Suffering as in a single query (get a single record, containing a single integer field) taking about 15 minutes.
And when management started complaining and I told them I did warn them a good 6 months earlier the true WTF came in to play. I was neither blamed, nor told to find a solution.
Admin
That's pretty respecable for just about anyone, as far as I know. I make quite a bit less than that, and I think I do okay.
Admin
Oh my god how can you all comment so blandly? I'm sitting here out of breath after laughing like a hyena at the whole bit... Yes, it's a tragic waste of money, and time, and blinking, but holy mother of Knuth, that's funny.
(awkward pause)
Well, I only discovered this nook a few minutes ago...
Admin
Simply because some languages make good practice hard compared to others. Just because you can do something in a language doesn't mean it's supported. Life is short - why deal with pain for no reason?
Admin
This doesn't really sound like an accident at all. The developer apparently gets a kick out of making software actively hostile to its users. Eye-burning colors may be due to bad taste, but unlabeled buttons are definitely due to intentional user hostility.
Admin
Blobster got it wrong. Franz Kafka got it right. (I'm referring to both the spelling and the ideas.)
Admin
And we continue with the usual 2 1/2 pages of language bashing without a single specific being offered. Pretty much "VB sucks, 'cause I said so".
Admin
You could use, I don't know, say MySQL or Postgres? Both are free, and 100% better than that POS Access.
Anyone who uses Access, when better FREE alternatives are out there, deserves what they get.
Admin
No, no, NO! You missed a note! It's "bah-boom tish!" Bah-boom tish! Try it again! You're going to have to keep practicing this all damn night if you can't even get this right. WTF is wrong with you?!
(Sorry, channeling bad music teachers I have known.)
Admin
All that Turing completeness means is that you can do anything with the language. It doesn't say anything about whether the language will help you along the way.
My main problem with VB is that the syntax is just painfully baroque. That would be something one can suffer if there weren't better options, but there are. Even in a MS-only environment, there are.
Admin
Admin
Admin
Okay - so if VB is analogous to a broken piano, then you're telling me that everytime I compile my well-written, bug-free app and deliver it to the customer, it will be completely full of bugs and non-functional simply because of the toolset? You're saying that the toolset itself is inherently faulty?
If VB is so useless and dead-end, how come I was able to put together a really nice ASP.NET website in VB that brings in MILLIONS of dollars a year in sales for a client? One that is highly functional, multi-tiered, OOP, including spiffy AJAX, calling .NET remoting, interop against older COM objects that had to be included - and was completed in a time frame that couldn't possibly be any longer than the same app written in C# since the code is now so incredibly similar (which I know since I program in both and the majority of code refers to framework stuff that's identical in both languages).
Look, I've dealt with lots of programmers in my career, and I gotta tell you, I've worked with some real moron Java and C# and C++ programmers who couldn't code themselves out of a paper bag. Programming is an art, and you either got it or you don't. Your brushes, paint, canvas, etc.. are not what matters. And if you don't know that, then you aren't a programmer, you're just a whiner and a hater. Go hate someone at a convenience store and leave programming to the adults.
Admin
But that's not how you spell "garbage" ...
Admin
When I asked why would he do such a thing, his reply was baffling: I can't use MySQL because not all web users have that installed!
For the record: this "programmer" has a B. Sc. in Computer Systems Engineering.
Admin
Yes dam MySQL and PostGres are so expensive I can see how a budget wouldn't allow for them :p
You are right though there are good VB programs and their are great VB developers. And there are even more crappy PHP developers in my eyes.
BUT... there is no reason in hell to have an access db for a program that is used/accessed by more then one computer, process or user.
Admin
A recursive function can always be replaced with a non-recursive function, although writing the non-recursive version might be difficult. FORTRAN 77 and earlier did not support recursion [recursion was added to Fortran in Fortran 90] (Lisp has recursion but not iteration).
Admin
Yet another made-up story. When are you guys gonna get your act together and post something that is actually real???
Admin
Therein is the true WTF. Nobody short of large corporations have $50,000 to spend on software to improve their operations. Granted, this is a school, but if it was a small business there would be no way in hell that they would have that kind of money to spend on software to help them generate profit and streamline things.
Admin
Of course the problems as stated are caused by the database that was selected. The guy could have chosen mySQL and still implemented that update in the same way.
Admin
Is the blue background a way for Alex to mark ignorant retards as potential writers for upcoming MFDs?
Admin
Hahaha. Pull the other one.
Everybody with even a shred of intellect knows that there are far more shitty VB progammers in the world than in any other language.
VB has appealed to the newbies and the people who really shouldn't be coding by marketting it as dead simple to use. The result of this is that you have a bunch of dead simple people using it.
Stop fooling yourself, and start using a real language. VB is second rate by anyones measure and if that's all somebody knows, I find it a stretch to even call them a programmer, let alone a developer.
Admin
Okay, one of the VBisms that so sucks is "On error continue next". Sure, you could handle errors, but so many programs just don't, and it's an accepted thing to do.
Admin
Yeah, that too. That's probably responsible for a good portion of why so many apps do "ON ERROR RESUME NEXT".
Admin
Does it come with a student-to-subject allocation algorithm, InterCourse?
Admin
I'd like to know how much experience you have in a corporate environment.
Where I work, IT makes available to business areas a SQL Server database. And since things are (rightly) locked down in the company, that means business areas can't just willy nilly create their own database servers running MySQL.
Not if corporate IT won't let you. Once again, exactly what kind of background do you have? Such wise words coming from you...
Granted, some of us work in small, tech savvy companies. Others work in large corporate environments with locked down IT policies. Next time you make sweeping statements, consider the context. If IT says "You get SQL Server; nothing else" then that's what you use. Same goes for Access. In some cases, Access IS the best solution.
Remember one thing smart-ass: absolutist statements tend to be incorrect. There are exceptions to everything. As such, in some cases Access is the best solution. Of course, that won't stop me from punching myself in the face every time I'm forced to use it, but hey.
Admin
That's all well and good if those in control of IT aren't total Nazi's. More often than not, they want 200 page cost evaluated upfront proposals before they'll even talk to you, and only them can't promise anything for at least 6 quarters. Yes I'm talking big corporate environments. Been there. Wish it was an embellishment, but it's not.
What's a manager to do? Many teams then hire rubbish contractors who develop crappy little access programs because it's quicker and cheaper. Then the real IT department gets to support the crap app and probably develop it properly. For the life of me I, despite IT policy's forbidding Access, it still creeps in there.
(Note this isn't a 'dis against all contractors, just the crappy cowboys who still think access is a real database or lie to their clients that it is. They usually like vbscript as well)
Admin
I think the comment "After blowing over $10,000", if accurate, sums the whole thing up. $10,000 is nothing for custom-built software; so the end result should not be surprising
Admin
Boring article.... yawn...
Is it me or are the posts here getting just too long, too stereotyped and plain too tedious?
Captcha: quibus... more like 'quit-bus'... :P
Admin
Now we know what Paula did before her brillant excursion into Java.
Admin
Sorry, but what do you expect for $10,000 ?? No, really. I would not touch it for such amount of money. So this must have been some garage/self educated "computer scientist".
Admin
Finally, someone at least getting near something of substance. The existence of "On Error Resume Next" isn't a big deal. There is no compulsion to use it. "Goto" can create a pile of spaghetti if misused in ANSI C. Don't do that. I've seen programs that handle errors with kid gloves in many languages. Don't do that.
But it's completely true that VB6's error trapping in general makes you jump through hoops to handle certain situations. A "try...catch...finally" construct would have been much appreciated.
Its reference counting mechanism is a PITA in certain situations. If you have a parent-child relationship where each may want a reference to the other, you run up against nasty circular reference issues. There are workarounds, but they're not entirely satisfactory.
Heavy math intensive stuff should be avoided. Serious bit-twiddling, while it can be done, just isn't something you want to do.
These are the types of issues someone could point to and have a valid point IMO. "It sucks because it's easy to write bad code" can be applied to any language. "It sucks because there are so many bad VB programmers" is no argument against the language itself.
Addendum (2008-06-27 01:46):
Finally, someone at least getting near something of substance.
"On Error Resume Next" actually has a very valid use: temporarily disabling error trapping when you'd prefer to check return values for your error checking instead of using VB's trapping scheme. Yes, it can be abused. "Goto" can create a pile of spaghetti if misused in ANSI C. Don't do that. I've seen programs that neglect errors in every language I've used. Don't do that.
But it's completely true that VB6's error trapping in general makes you jump through hoops to handle certain situations. A "try...catch...finally" construct would have been much appreciated.
Its reference counting mechanism is a PITA in certain situations. If you have a parent-child relationship where each may want a reference to the other, you run up against nasty circular reference issues. There are workarounds, but they're not entirely satisfactory.
Heavy math intensive stuff should be avoided. Serious bit-twiddling, while it can be done, just isn't something you want to do.
These are the types of issues someone could point to and have a valid point IMO. "It sucks because it's easy to write bad code" can be applied to any language. "It sucks because there are so many bad VB programmers" is no argument against the language itself.
Admin
...and while the screams of the dying airline passengers fade the battered disc of the full moon appears just to the left of wher that 747 came from, setting the scene for 'the last night on(or of) earth'...
CAPTCHA: saluto...
Admin
-- Troy McClure Star of such films as 'P is for Psycho'
Admin
Some of the apps designed for MS-DOS (or curses / ncurses) in 80x24 text only were pretty damn well designed. Having multiple font variations, proportional & fixed fonts, variations in Windows default settings etc. make it all worse.
How many people have seen apps looking very strange if they set their own text size defaults for taskbar, window shade, etc. to something different? Or seen HTML forms look screwed on a non standard browser or with different default text size?
MS-DOS may have been shit, but textual interfaces are kind of the zen of programming. It was even more of a challenge when an entire screen was populated and then you'd hit "Xmit" to send all the data to the mainframe and get back another screenfull to fill in, and you'd have to handle error conditions etc.
Alert dialogs and forms design are the bane of the VB/ Visual [C++|C#|etc] world.
Admin
Admin
I think that sort of interface is what is known as "Angry Fruit Salad".
Admin
Priceless! A girl who is talking about VB "professionals" who write "well designed VB apps". This is just beautiful! Never before have I seen such oxymora in a single sentence!
Admin
wtf="No support for blink tags in IE? IE users don't know what they're missing! Score one for Firefox and Opera!"
lol
Admin
Just use PostgreSQL. You get a commercial-grade native Windows database with odbc and all the bells and whistles you could want for the low, low price of zero dollars.
There's really no need to use Access for anything, except some PHB forcing to use it.
Admin
Brainf*ck, Mondriaan and POVRays's scripting language are also Turing Complete. That does not mean they are suitable for building large systems.