O
Old VB6 Guy
First of all, sorry if crossposting bothers you -- I don't normally do
it, but both of these groups seem relavant to my questions.
Alright, the time has finally come to make an investment in time and
money to jump start my career again. I am currently a VB6/ASP
programmer, but worse yet, I am in a company that has me doing (yuch!)
support work mostly and I get extremely limited programming "bones"
thrown to me these days. In short, I miss coding a WHOLE lot. So I
want to take the plunge and teach myself enough .NET skills and
concepts to fenagle my way through an interview and get on a different
track. These things are in my corner:
1. I am 47 years old and I have been a VB/ASP/Web programmer since
about 1994. IOW, I have lots of real world coding experience in a
variety of environements, albiet in a dying language set.
2. I have a solid foundational understanding of object oriented
concepts, and I am familiar with the way in which VB6 implemented
itself as object based, with interface inherintance and so on. I have
a fair bit of experience in older Java (JDK 1.1) development from my
college days (I graduated at 41 after 20+ years in the US Air Force)
3. I have Visual Studio Enterprise Architect Edition at my disposal to
learn with, both at work and at home. I also have books from O'Reilly
that cover ASP.Net, VB.Net and some Framework stuff for the original
..Net platform.
4. Although I love to program GUI and web stuff, my primary function
these past four years is that of a MS SQL Server 200 DBA. I have a
fail-over clustered environment that I am the soleproprietor of, and I
have scads of transact SQL experiance, along with DTS package design.
IOW, I am pretty database conversant.
So my questions are:
1. Is the version of 1.0 .NET good enough to get grounded in the
methodology, or is the newer 1.1 and/or 2.0 versions THAT much
different that I would be wasting my time?
2. Is certification as important as it once was? I am (was?) a
certified VB6 programmer, once on my way to the now defunct MCSD
certification. I quit when it hit the dinosaur listing.
3. Seeing as I am starting WELL behind the power curve, the choice of
language may be arbitrary now. I have a background (obviously) in VB6,
but I know that VB.Net is vastly different in many ways -- but it still
LOOKS sorta familiar. OTOH, given my limited experience in Java, C#
doesn't seem all that foreign to me and maybe it is more universally
adaptable? So which of these languages is in higher employer demand
these days, and along with that, can you do ASP.Net coding in either
(or any) .Net compliant language as you supposedly could in legacy ASP,
or is that a big fat lie again?
Sorry for the length, but I am deciding my future and it is an
important thing in my life -- at least warranting a decent question to
the community of my peers. Can you help a coding brother out here?
Will code for food...Old VB6 Guy
it, but both of these groups seem relavant to my questions.
Alright, the time has finally come to make an investment in time and
money to jump start my career again. I am currently a VB6/ASP
programmer, but worse yet, I am in a company that has me doing (yuch!)
support work mostly and I get extremely limited programming "bones"
thrown to me these days. In short, I miss coding a WHOLE lot. So I
want to take the plunge and teach myself enough .NET skills and
concepts to fenagle my way through an interview and get on a different
track. These things are in my corner:
1. I am 47 years old and I have been a VB/ASP/Web programmer since
about 1994. IOW, I have lots of real world coding experience in a
variety of environements, albiet in a dying language set.
2. I have a solid foundational understanding of object oriented
concepts, and I am familiar with the way in which VB6 implemented
itself as object based, with interface inherintance and so on. I have
a fair bit of experience in older Java (JDK 1.1) development from my
college days (I graduated at 41 after 20+ years in the US Air Force)
3. I have Visual Studio Enterprise Architect Edition at my disposal to
learn with, both at work and at home. I also have books from O'Reilly
that cover ASP.Net, VB.Net and some Framework stuff for the original
..Net platform.
4. Although I love to program GUI and web stuff, my primary function
these past four years is that of a MS SQL Server 200 DBA. I have a
fail-over clustered environment that I am the soleproprietor of, and I
have scads of transact SQL experiance, along with DTS package design.
IOW, I am pretty database conversant.
So my questions are:
1. Is the version of 1.0 .NET good enough to get grounded in the
methodology, or is the newer 1.1 and/or 2.0 versions THAT much
different that I would be wasting my time?
2. Is certification as important as it once was? I am (was?) a
certified VB6 programmer, once on my way to the now defunct MCSD
certification. I quit when it hit the dinosaur listing.
3. Seeing as I am starting WELL behind the power curve, the choice of
language may be arbitrary now. I have a background (obviously) in VB6,
but I know that VB.Net is vastly different in many ways -- but it still
LOOKS sorta familiar. OTOH, given my limited experience in Java, C#
doesn't seem all that foreign to me and maybe it is more universally
adaptable? So which of these languages is in higher employer demand
these days, and along with that, can you do ASP.Net coding in either
(or any) .Net compliant language as you supposedly could in legacy ASP,
or is that a big fat lie again?
Sorry for the length, but I am deciding my future and it is an
important thing in my life -- at least warranting a decent question to
the community of my peers. Can you help a coding brother out here?
Will code for food...Old VB6 Guy