Jobs

OK, there are DEFINITELY more jobs out there for C# guys than VB.Net junkies. A few years ago, it was the other way around. Wow, I had no idea the landscape had changed that much in the last few years. I'm certainly going to start writing more C# code.

Every job listing I see now is for a C# position, but they will take VB folks and train them, I guess. Which is really just a cruel joke. There are so many people looking for work out there, if you have the choice to hire a VB developer and teach it C#, or just hire a C# developer, which one will you choose? Got to remarket myself as a C# guy.

Primary?

I started writing the .Net languages when they were initially released on valentines day in 2002. So I've been a .Net guy since day 1. Before that, I was a VB6 programmer, and wrote web sites in Notepad before moving into Homesite, then eventually Dreamweaver.

Would you believe I actually got tapped to teach a VB6 class just a couple of years ago? 2006 or 2007, I think. That old thing will never die. It's still a cool platform I guess. But I went right into VB.Net when I switched jobs and went to work for a local IT consulting firm in 2002. The first project was picking up after another programmer who initially wrote the site in C#. Then I did a small winforms program in VB.Net, then more C#, then web sites in VB. Since then, I've placed over 1,000,000 lines of VB.Net code in production, and maybe 20,000 lines of C# into production. So VB.Net has totally been my primary language for the last 7 years.

Now it seems the workforce is being dominated by C# jobs. I was talking with a trainer yesterday who had cut out all of their VB classes for lack of demand. So apparently people who want to become new or better .Net programmers want to go C#. If you do a job search for VB.Net on any of the major job boards, you find C# jobs where they will consider a VB programmer that can be retrained.

This leads me to give serious consideration to changing my primary language. I'm the only developer at the company I currently work for, so I can write any project in any language I choose. I hate a case sensitive language, and that's why I only use C# when I am forced to now. But I'm sure with time I will get used to all the nuances of the language. I recently had to translate one of my favorite scripts into C# and it was only mildly frustrating. Do you, gentle reader, have an opinion here? What do you think the programming landscape is doing?

DB Connection Strings

Here's how I connect to databases using vb.net:

In a config file, I typically use an AppSettings value to store the setting like:

<add key="dbconn" value="Data Source=127.0.0.1; User Id=sa;Password=; Initial Catalog=MediaDent; Persist Security Info=False" />



Pervasive:

Provider=PervasiveOLEDB;Data Source=C:\PWorks;

SQL Server:

Data Source=127.0.0.1; User Id=sa;Password=; Initial Catalog=dbname; Persist Security Info=False

MS Access:

Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0; Data Source=C:\dbfolder\viewer.mdb; Persist Security Info=False;

ODBC:

DSN=myDsn;Uid=myUsername;Pwd=;

or

DSN=connectionname;

And that's all I've had to connect to recently.