anyone know if they''ve made the rumoured changes to VB? I know initially it was really really different - but most of the pro. VB developers told MS where to stick it and wanted their *old* VB back again...

Jack;

.NET is targetted at businesses. Large companies have huge organizations. They have C++ high-performance/hard-to-maintain, they have VB front-ends they can easilly keep up-to-date, they have massive SQL databases with stored procedures and triggers to keep track of.

.NET does this for them. It pulls the power of C++, the dev speed of VB, and makes Web Site design easier. This isn''t to make game writing easier, it is supposed to make managing customers, inventories, products, and support easier. Instead of using a filestream in C, FileOpen in VB and the FileSystemObject in VB Script, .NET uses the same file object no matter what language you are in. This is also why they would drop Java -- it has it''s own object model. C# uses the consistant one.

Instead of having all the different dev tools, they will be collected under one IDE using one, consistant object model. It is designed to make everybody''s life easier, just like going to a single code-base for XP.

As a game developer, you won''t have to worry about coding for 9x vs NT, since there will simply be XP (which gives you a nice performance boost over 9x anyway).

Not every tool is made for you. So quit yer bitchen, fix your screwed up machine, keep coding in C++, and enjoy the most stable OS you''re going to find on your desktop machine.

Alright, so I know the world isn''t going to end because of XP and .NET, I just stated that it might if they are as bad as what some people have been saying. You should have no problems reinstalling WinXP as long as you don''t go doing stuff like getting a new motherboard (and how often do you do that?). Visual Studio .NET does sound good and as I said I actually like the programming tools from Microsoft (I''m a big VC++, DirectX fan) but it seems that the products targeted at consumers suck (Win ME anyone?) while those targeted at power users (like Win2k) are actually good. I don''t know what is wrong with NT but I think that there may be a hardware problem but I don''t know. As to Office, my screwing around in the registry probably didn''t help (though I don''t think that I touched anything to do with Office). Speaking of Office...you need an activation code for it right? And I got one for my old computer and then when I went to install it on my new one the activation code did not work. Does it do a hardware check too? I would be interested to know. Mind you I just connected to the internet and registered again and it didn''t complain so I don''t mind
As to my feelings towards Microsoft, some days I love em'' others I hate ''em but when you think about how much of their software we use everyday I guess that is no wonder (there isn''t much software by any company that is bug free and perfect). As to XP and .NET I think we can just wait and see how they turn out and if they suck we can diss them then. I don''t think any software should depend on the Internet though (I live rural, get 1kb/s downloads and get frequently disconnected plus my parents use the same phoneline to receive business calls). Oh and one last thing: skins are cool and I think it is neat that XP supports them (I used KDE which has skins and that is really cool).





-Xargon, Master of the Infinite Void.

Hallo!!

Everytime Microsoft relases a new OS it''s always talk about Microsoft dominating the world. I don''t think XP and .Net will change the way we think about computers and programming significantly. Also i''m using Linux SUSE 7,1 and Windows ME. Well Windows ME is not a good thing, it crashes constantly and so on. But Linux is kinda good except for the lack of drivers.


Daniel Westerstål
Sigma Entertainment
http://sigmaent.cjb.net

What will happen if every one uses MS as they''re main source of software ???

It will harm the consumer in a dramatic way, becouse MS will be able to controll prices, and will do stupid things like making you pay for every document you print in word etc...

They have written some good software, or at leased based it on some good idea''s, but the main thing about MS is money, your money ...

IMHO I think every should just look around and see if there''s some other program that does the trick just the same before buying any MS programs, just to make sure they won''t grow to much, and leave you, the consumer, with eventualy no choice at all !

Jollyjeffers,

Some extreme changes have been made to VB and they aren''t going to change any time soon (which is a good thing in my opinion).

For instance, error handling is much better now. No more silly On Error Goto statements. You now have elegant SEH in the form of try, catch, and finally blocks:

try
{
// some code
}
catch(SomeException)
{

}
finally
{

}

To declare a class now, you must use the Class keyword which is a god send. I hated the concept of a file being a class just because it had a .cls extension.

There are some other changes now but I''m at work and need to get doing some



Dire Wolf
www.digitalfiends.com

VB.NET Changes:
-Inheritance (HELLO!)
-Overriding (goes along with inheritance)
-Overloading
-Interfaces (actually define an interface, not stubs)
-Error Handling (Try-Catch-Finally, Dire''s sample was C#)
-Free Threading
-Console Programming
-No more Form hiding. The designer generates code that you can edit. Which means that all objects can be declared w/o a form (even Timers, Sockets, etc)
-WinNT/2k/XP Services
-Even faster
-File/Class Independance
-Garbage Collection (the Terminate event doesn''t fire immediately when the last reference is lost, but after the object goes out of scope and the GC destroys it. This prevents circular references.)
-There are lots more, but I can''t think of ''em right now

plus all the added benifits of using the .NET objects:
-Better Collections
-Member-wise Object comparison (if inherited from Object)
-Easy access to Event List
-Dynamic run-time code generation/compilation
-same runtime dll''s as all .NET languages
-use any DLLs written in another .NET language
-etc, etc, etc

Hope this helps you see how different .NET really is.

Epolevne

quote:

---

Original post by Epolevne

Actually .NET doesn''t use byte code. It uses MSIL, which is an assembly-esque language with OOP support.

---

that is called a byte code. Might not be 1 bytes, might be 2, 3 or four or more, but anyway, we are talking about the same thing.

quote:

---

The .NET framework compiles the code to the native system dynamically from that...so it runs much faster than byte code.

---

That''s called just in time compiling. Java has been supporting that since 1.1.

It''s rather souped-up byte code. From:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?URL=/library/techart/faq111700.htm

This byte-code contains version info, source file info (for debugging), digital signiture, compile-time dependancy list, and other stuff.

This allows front-end code dependant upon .NET components to recognize when there is a new version and automatically recompile. Good-bye DLL hell.

Note that the .NET docs also list good practices so when you kick out Component V2, you don''t toast your clients during the recompile phase.

Try that with Java.

Sounds like VS.NET is shaping up nicely... for VB programmers. I use C++ and only C++ myself so is there anything in it for me? What I care about is fast execution for my games and I don''t know anyone who programms VB so I can''t see any use of the language compatability. Well anyway, one last question for today: is Visual Studio.NET run over the internet in an asp page or is an actual bit of physical software that I can buy and install? If it still runs from my PC and not over the internet then why on earth did MS call it .NET? I thought .NET is all that internet app stuff. This is confusing me.



-Xargon, Master of the Infinite Void.