Without beating about the bush, the VB-Access curriculla is *very* harmful. Infact, VisualBasic 6.0 was *never* meant to be used beyond quick GUI prototyping - a fact asserted by the *total* overhaul by M$ of VB in VB.NET.
Hence, a good VB 6.0 programmer has now to *unlearn* his tricks, and *learn* good things like OOPs (yes - VB.NET now supports OOP..) As far as I know, VB-Access duo is suggested by most technical universities because designing GUI in VB is no doubt fast to learn, but being a proprietary language, standards and portability is a *big* issue.. Technical universities should strive to teach their students good programming practises, as well as teach them a language which is *not* tied to a particular platform or vendor... Cal-LUGers have suggested excellent GUI-DBMS pairs for this thread, and to reiterate, a C++/SQL based duo is *best* suited for learning purposes AFAIK.. The reason why I suggest C++ or a C++ like language (Python, C#, Java..) is that OOP is *closely* ties with RDBMS design. Altough OOP modelling is being fast replaced by agile/threat/contractual software modelling, programmers have to start learning from somewhere ! FLOSS based solutions gives us the added advantages of community support, platform independence, and other freedom which are *not* possible using propreitary languages.. However, I would like to differ with Sankarshanda on only one point : >>For example (and this is a very basic one), in a lot of the MCA courses, it is *Data >>Structures through C/C++*, I agree that the same can be taught also through Pascal if one so desires. I would like to reiterate that Pascal is something better left as a maintainance language of older code. If you wnat to know why, Google for Brian Kernighan's opinion about Pascal ;) Good students who have *really* learnt data structures well, will appreciate the finese and elgance of implementing in C/C++, and how coding in it seamlessly merges with *any* data structure... The GNU C++ compiler is one of the most ISO standard compiler ever, so no problem regarding C/C++ ! If fast GUI creation is a priority of the syllabi, then again C/C++ based RADs line QT/GTK/wxWindows etc will come to the rescue. No problem here too.. This email is *not* only a suggestion, but a plea to the university I (and many of LUGers) study under - WBUT. WBUT incorporates the deadly VB-Access duo into our syllabus, and now that VB6 is *obsolete* and *unsupported*, I really do not want to pass out of college learning a dead language ! Moreover, I will *never* be able to practise VB-Access modelling at home as I do not own Windows, leave alone the costly Visual Studio package... Take this as a plea - replace the VB-Access duo. It can eveb be C#-SQL, but *not* VB - please. I know there are many ILUGers who can make this small change in our syllabus - WBUT is doing *great* work in OSS, so why not practise what they teach ? Hope this does not fall to deaf ears.. there is still time for a good overhaul Regards Subhobroto Sinha http://www.geocities.com/subhobrotosinha __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/node.php?id=3
