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Technology Stocks : INPR - Inprise to Borland (BORL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (3232)	7/28/1999 8:24:00 PM
From: synchro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5102

I have spent the past two years gradually converting my Delphi legacy code. As to which language, I'm now completely converted to what I guess a lot of people here would call the Dark Side: Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0. The standalone programs, mostly numerical analysis and actuarial pricing stuff, are being moved to Visual C++ 6.0 w/ MFC. That did mean learning a lower level of Microsoft Windows programming than Delph, but thank God for the new edition of Jeff Prosise's MFC tutorial book. The bonus I found is that C++'s object-orientation is richer than Object Pascal in my work. For quick-and-dirty programs and database stuff, I use Visual Basic. I found VB to be good enough for most non-numerical work that I do. That best part is that I can teach VB to entry-level people quickly. Not so with Delphi, in my own experience. I've got past the language purity fetish/obsession stuff. I'll use whatever that gets me higher salary, more frequent promotions, better headhunter offers, etc., etc. And right now I'm getting results and rewards w/o using Delphi. So other than some residual sentimental attachment to Delphi, I don't miss it one bit. To tell you the truth, it feels GOOD to be on the Dark Side. There's more support for me to tap--simply because of the sheer number of people out there using Visual Studio and the books written about it. And I don't have to worry about whether the product will be orphaned after the next quarterly financial reporting period. As far as the supposedly obsolete MFC, what I found is that since it's a thin wrapper around the native Windows API, by learning it I'm really 80% there in terms of knowing the nitty-gritty parts of programming Windows. So actually I'm looking foward to take the next step, namely going native Windows API using ATL and COM interfaces. Gotta go. Good luck to all. Sorry to say, but you need it w/ Inprise/Borland.