LINQ Rocks

I'm becoming a convert. The new job is awesome, I'm loving Raleigh. But this new gig has me focusing on a subset of VB.Net (ADO.Net) that I've never had to dive into before. and it rocks.

LINQ to Entities is a small but durable subset of ado.net introduced in framework 3.5. It gives you separated OOP layers to run between a DB (or multiple db's) and the rest of your framework. You can define an EDMX file to obfuscate your data, and it will generate the XML to connect your business layer to. These become your objects (entities) for the entity framework.

I've always been inherently opposed to OOP layers, they just add complexity when it isn't really needed. You end up creating spaghetti code with LINQ to Entity, but it's not as bad as it could be. and once it's built, it's built. I'm becoming a convert.

Once your data layer is built it's done. This makes the front end extraction considerably easier. You write linq queries instead of T-SQL queries, which are a completely different syntax.

The ease of front end development and flexibility of the LINQ syntax are what's really making me turn over the leaf. In T-sql, I'm hooked on aggregates. I can do anything in t-sql, been writing it for years. I'm still at the bottom of the learning curve from the LINQ syntax. But using .Include's to create joins has me intrigued. I'm actually looking forward to learning more. which hasn't happened in a long time with vb.net.

Last day on the job

Well, it's good to be changing jobs. Today is my last day on this work from home job, and next wednesday I start the new gig with a software company in Raleigh, NC. The new job is all VB.Net web sites over SQL Server databases, hosted in the same environment. It's going to be nice to have something stable that isn't a pressure cooker environment where anything can be thrown at me.

Here's to new beginnings!

New Digs

Well, it happened. I accepted a new job offered to me yesterday. Looks like all that whining about switching to C# was unfounded. The new digs are strictly VB.Net over SQL Server. Now I have to get a car, sell the house, work my way out of this job, buy a house.... geez. let the whining begin.

Tech support is a good thing

I've been tagging support for this one company trying to get help with connecting to an XML web service that they provide. A solid month hitting up the two contacts I got with no response, actively refusing phone calls and email responses. I eventually had to go back to my client (who chose this discount provider) and get them involved from the sales side.

It is so nice to actually get tech support from someone who know's what they are talking about. As technicians, I think we all have to strive to be that guy. The one guy who actually can provide some help even if the rest of the organization is comprised of dumbasses.

Yesterday my client went back to the salesperson, who tagged "that guy" and we had the problem fixed in 2 emails. They didn't have the numbers I was submitting in their system, the same thing I asked the other guys to check.

So go be "that guy" today. Take care of the small easy problems, and knock out as many as you can. Be helpful to our clients. They will appreciate it much more than an unreturned phone call.

ActivePDF

I have to profess love for ActivePDF. I think there are a bunch of PDF form filler services out there. But their ActiveToolkit software is top shelf. Today I am using it for a second process.

It's a DLL consumable with .Net, so you have to set a reference to the toolkit. But then you can open and manipulate pdf's inside of the toolkit in a bunch of ways. The first time I had to consume it was to prepopulate and/or extract data from a PDF. I got the data in an XML string, and looped through the XML nodes to shove them into the PDF. Open the input file first (source), then create the output file (destination), populate the field values in memory and call CopyForm to write the memory values to the output hard file. Very slick. I can also specify specific field names to populate, like a submit date.

Today I'm going the other direction. I am using ActivePDF to open the input (source) file, loop through each field on the PDF and inserting the field names (with some other identifying data and logging) into the database. Should be interesting and fun.

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?