Then you started late enough, to notice the maturing of the HTML5/JS alternative.
Many companies still use Flash despite its existence.
And that's because of some tech-goodies which are still not easy to mimick with HTML5/JS -
and because Adobe still *supports* this developer-tool. My point was that there's many
vendors who take their responsibility more seriously with regards to those, who they expect
to invest a lot time and money around the tools they have to offer.
But I think, we have that well-established now - developer-tools, especially when being
languages, or thightly related to them, deserve a bit more caution from the vendors-side
with regards to the eco-systems which evolve around them - a thing MS was very careless
about in the last years.
Well, there's always a few who have a good gut-feeling, which later on turns out to be
the right one - still there's the petition with some 15000 votes, to bring back Silverlight -
cannot imagine, that each and everybody who voted there was not "enlightened enough" -
or should be belittled with "man, you should have seen HTML5 coming" ... some were
using it despite that - Browsers are still in need of a "better internal language" - CoffeeScript,
TypeScript are attempts which use JS as a kind of "IL" - but also Google is trying with
Chromes NaCl (native-client), to offer better programming for Browser-Clients.
[deployment]
I wrote that it's still *easier* with VB6 (especially when you use regfree COM),
not that .NET had "issues" with deployment.
I bring (as anybody else) reasons for why I'm personally don't use or like it -
trying very hard, to not write untruths whilst doing so.
And you're right - when I make "blanket statements" (which I normally dislike),
I do it mostly on purpose, in reply to another blanket statement, to point this
kind of stuff out to others.
You will see quite a lot of this approach here in this thread, where I hand out the
same "way of poor arguing" simply back to the one who came up with it first.
Now, if only more .NETers would see it the same way as you do - you can even
replace .NET with VB6 in the above sentence, and it still is true.
My point being, don't judge VB6ers that fast - there's a lot more reasons many
in your camp never considered, which play a role why they still use their tool.
Sorry when I try in the following, to shorten things a bit - this discussion eats
up too much of my time already - and many things start to become repetitive.
Since you became a collector of my "I agree" statements recently, maybe it will
make you happy when I come up with a few more of them: ;)
- I agree, that .NET in the perception of customers has a better "ranking" than VB6.
- I agree, that there's more opportunities on the Job-market for .NET than for VB6.
There - why should I deny obvious facts, when they are brought up.
[provocations and banishments]
Carlos is not a native english-speaker, hard to walk the fine line between insults and
"stalwart replies" in such heated discussions (had and still have my own problems
with that) - aside from that, I never was a fan of the "it takes two to dance"-saying -
I'm a strong believer in causal-chains - find and remove the true cause, and a lot of
strange effects will never happen.
There's a learning-phase which takes a few years, until you can consider taking up
a career as developer - and in the early phase, as a totally green Newbie, it doesn't
matter much, which tool to begin with - VB6 will do the Job (learning algorithms
and patterns) just fine (very good Debugger, Intellisense - any IDE with easy to
accomplish "try again differently"-cycles will bring a Newbie up to speed).
When the end of your studies comes near, then it's your responsibility of course,
to look where the greatest chances are, and to pick a language which you consider
promising - depending on the field you have the most interest in.
If it's Web-Programming, then there's many good tools to choose from (not only ASP.NET),
if you're more the electronics and hardware-guy, then deepening your C-Skills is a good
idea before knocking on doors there, if you are into "mobile Apps" then Android- or iOS-
tools are a good idea - and if you consider Win-Desktop-Apps your future playground -
then looking around, what's currently used (often it's .NET, sometimes C++ or Java) is
of course right.
That you started your first steps with VB6 will not hinder you in that later happening
"refine your skills"-phase.
That was exactly the point - I feel he dished out an "invented story" -
not really "honest debate", as I understand the term.
Olaf

