Kenneth Ismert
kismert at sbcglobal.net
Tue Jun 13 13:08:49 CDT 2006
John, > ... For that reason alone, suggesting [Ruby] as an alternative is > probably unhelpful in this list. I'd agree with you, except for the fact that VBA is a dead language. It is a legacy support language, which means no new features will ever be added, and its support will eventually sunset. Access is on the long slow path to obscurity, just like Visual FoxPro. That makes discussion of alternatives more than a rhetorical exercise. > ... Personally, I think that .Net is the future. .Net is a wonderful technology platform, and it has significant momentum. But Ruby, a non .Net language, has shockingly good .Net support. That's not my personal opinion -- that's my observation of .Net professionals at a .Net User's Group meeting held recently at the Microsoft offices here in Houston. Ruby was being presented to a bunch of C# and VB.NET developers, and they were shocked at how good Ruby's .Net support was. This was a hostile crowd at first, trust me, but they were truly surprised at what Ruby had to offer. Were there converts? Probably not, but at least they were aware there was something valid outside the C# universe. > I will get there someday, but in the meantime, I eat because of > my Access skills. But where will your bread be buttered 5 years from now? For most of us, likely something other than Access/VBA. If you like the dynamic/RAD/flexibility aspects of VBA, and want to move further in that direction, look at Ruby. For .NET programmers wanting a taste of dynamic programming now, look at IronPython, a .NET IL interpreter for Python. -Ken