Hi there

I had been working previously for 12 years for a company where software development was not their main focus. During that time I developed using C under Unix and then Dos, shifted onto Access and then tried out Delphi and Visual Basic before moving back to Access.

Now, I’ve got a new job with a company that, as far as I can see, has multiple Cobol (under Unix) based systems out in the field and now wants to modernize by redeveloping them using Visual Basic 6, with talk about moving to Visual Basic .NET at some unknown stage in the future.

The thing is, it all seems extremely weird to me and I’d like to ask some of you guys for some advice.

In terms of programming for my old company, we concentrated on putting out systems that worked well. We didn’t believe in bells and whistles, rather we would focus on making sure everything was plain and clear to the user. At times this involved maybe not using all the possible features that windows could provide, but we found it worked and had minimal problems.

In terms of programming for my new firm I find myself, metaphorically, scratching my head in wonderment at a lot of things that I’ve found. There, they have an established VB programmer who has worked there for at least a year and his ideas in general seem to be totally opposite to what I have been taught and what I have picked up from places such as this. It would probably be best if I gave you a few, for instances…


Because I was going to be a VB developer, before the job I broke out VB 6 and started to code in anger once more. I hit at least 3 major hurdles in trying to develop a ‘framework’, or system of coding that I was happy with. When I turned up for my first day, within a half hour of chatting with the boss and the established programmer, I mentioned the 3 major hurdles I had hit and they reacted by saying things like, “That would have saved us time”, or “Ah, that’s why couldn’t get that to work”. At this stage I was a bit puzzled as to why these issues hadn’t been solved by themselves.

One of the other issues I asked about was to do with locking. Previously I had used a system of functional locking (basically, using a table to flag things that were locked, eg “INVOICE”, “12345”) rather than use Jet locking or SQL Server locking. I understand “First Save Wins” and “Last Save Wins” strategy but my previous preference was to make sure that two people could not edit the same data at the same time. When I brought this up I got the usual reply of “what happens if someone pulls a record up on their screen and then goes to lunch”. I had hit this issue before and used devices such as a utility to free locks under user control and a scheduled process to remove “old” locks to name but a few, which I duly explained. The boss seemed happy enough and told me to discuss it with the established programmer which I did. The response I got was basically that it was not that important, which I found decidedly odd.

After a couple of days, I mentioned a typical problem that occurs with VAT calculations (probably very similar to SALES TAX calculations in the US). In that it is very easy to end up with VAT figures to be out by a small amount, depending on how you total this data. In previous systems I have usually been out by a few pence but can describe exactly why this occurs and have used methods like ‘Accountants rounding’ to minimize this. The response I got completely floored me. I was told by the established programmer that he placed a ‘disclaimer’ for the user’s to manually confirm the VAT figures since they may be inaccurate and that this disclaimer “took some pressure of him”.

I am currently working on a module that was assigned to the guy who previously did my job but left before I was employed. While looking through some of his code I pulled up a form that had two fields on it, a code number and a description field. There are 800 lines of code behind this form. That is 800 lines of code as reported by MZ Tools btw. Personally I would not have budgeted for any more that 50 to 100 lines for such a simple form. The first form I was working on had 23 ADODC controls on it and accessed 4 tables, when I expanded the form and spotted them I nearly laughed out loud. I asked the established programmer about these things and was told “you don’t need to see that on your first day”. The weird thing is, that I’ve seen the stuff that the established programmer is working on and he has one form per module in his project, nothing more.

I expected to turn up, be told that this is the grid we use, this is the library we use (bought in or developed in house) this is the way our forms behave and these are the general principles we follow. Instead I had a very informal chat for around an hour just really about “what ifs” and things that would be nice, was sat down in front of a PC and handed 5 or 6 sheets of Access mdb documentation for the tables my module would work on. Inside a day I had discovered 4 or 5 inconsistencies with the tables (storing a value as an INT in one table and the same value was a LONG INT in another table etc). When I remarked about this to the established programmer I was told to always consider a certain value as a LONG (which to me means, “It’ll be sorted later”), not a mention of telling the boss (who is the database designer).

So, basically I’m in the situation of having no library, apart from True DBGrid and have been basically told to do my own thing. The previous guy seemed to write 400 lines of code per field edited on screen and use a data control whenever the whim took him. I can do this but it would be against everything I’ve ever learnt and will be a nightmare to maintain or alter. I fear the day I will be asked to do anything with the established programmers code.

I’ve actually thought that some day soon, the boss will tell me that I’ve passed the test and will show me the proper code they are developing or that someone’s going to pop out of a cupboard and say “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera”.

Any of you guys ever been in a situation like this?

Rgds

Adagio2004