"Sean Hederman" wrote in message
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"Brian" wrote in message
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"Sean Hederman" wrote in message

But one of the design goals of the .NET framework is to help resolve this
exact issue.


Setting goals is one thing, achieving them is quite another. I don't
suppose anyone ever started out with any product *intending* to cause
version issues.

Anyway what's so holy about binary
programs?

As someone who does much of his work in Access, it is highly unlikely that I
would claim there is anything holy about binaries, and I think you will find
that I indeed made no such claim. As I keep saying, I was simply
explaining/illustrating the OP's error in assuming that a dotnet app was in
some sense independent of a runtime environment and hence immune to version
problems.

Good for you, I hate it. I like my code nicely commented and with good
semantic naming.

Indeed, but there is a certain satisfaction in successfully completing a
detective mission. I just love problem solving, I'm a weirdo, I like
support work!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally anti dotnet, I can see that there is
merit in some of the things Microsoft has tried to achieve. However, for a
pure (Windows) database app of any size up to less-than-massive, I consider
that Access is so much more productive a development technology that it is
crazy, and possibly dishonest, to use anything else - and before anyone
starts screaming again about the limitations of the mdb file as a backend
database, let me say again, I KNOW, you hear me, I KNOW: Access apps can be
developed very satisfactorily indeed with a SQL Server backend, lotsa stored
procedures and so on, and this is what I often do.

This is not a criticism specifically of dotnet - I held the same opinion
about VB6 and predecessors - rather, it is a recognition of the special
qualities that Access brings to the table through it's status as a product
totally dedicated to one kind of app i.e. the Windows database app.

I myself invested in VS.Net as soon as it was out, and have several times
embarked on developing apps using it. However, on each occasion, I have got
so frustrated at the shortcomings, flaws and downright bugs I found that I
gave up and went back to VB6. Such as? I hear you asking. Well, here's
just one tiny, tiny example: the Windows Forms combo box control. A right
Friday afternoon job if ever I saw one. Why the hell doesn't it expose a
border style property? And why the hell doesn't it autocomplete (something
combo boxes have been doing since about Babbage's time)? OK, one of the
fantastic things about dotnet is that it's so easy to roll your own
controls, so you can get round cock-ups like this (anyone want an
autocompleting combo box with a border style property? I've got one
knocking around somewhere), but when you find and have to resolve something
like this every hour or so projects begin to look unfeasibly expensive.

OK, these things will get resolved (maybe they already have been, I haven't
looked at the thing for ages), but at the moment I'm pretty grumpy about
what seems to me to have been something of a waste of cash!