Hiya Bob ----

>Well, the percentage of HACKS using VB I am sure is very high, to the level of 50% or higher. What happends is, MS has made everyone think that they can program with VB since it is so easy...
>

I work with close to 100 VB developers on a daily basis; I'd say only 25% of them were hacks but a good 75% of them don't know data or any other VS tool making them effectively useless as systems architects --- which is an important role often overlooked in E/AD.

>So, department head buys it and starts to hack away, has problems or realizes the project is to big for him to do alone, so he hires a 'VB' programmer.
>
>You don't see this happening with C++ or J++ or VFP...
>
>However, what this does is cause a huge demand for VB programmers which makes there be more VB programs out there, which means more VB needed.

What's worse is that when data is concerned, the VB developer invariably screams "Access!" and attempts to do the project in Access/VBA and then you have the nightmare of trying to figure out what the heck is going on in all of these VBA declarations. You think VB solutions can be hacks, wait till you see an overgrown Access app.

And whats even WORSE yet is that MSFT is demoing Access2000 and showing how seamless it integrates with SQL Server....I can see all of those VB guys out there now having orgasms about doing c/s in Access2000 and allowing almost unrestricted access (pardon the pun) to enterprise data....

>
>I apologize to all the 'real' programmers who use VB as one of their tools.
>

I'd like to, but the odds of a real programmer in a group of VB coders who might hear the apology is low.