wrote...
LINQ
**** you're the biggest fair-weather fan I've ever met-- let me guess;
....

Provide one url to the Google Groups newsgroups archines in which I've
*EVER* said anything positive about any dialect of the BASIC
programming language. Just one.

I'll admit I don't know much about LINQ, having only read about it in
the articles linked to the OP and a few articles in
http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/future/linq/. If you believe
Microsoft is serious about .Net (and you'll lower my estimate of your
intelligence even further if you don't), it seems pretty clear they'll
be pretty serious about LINQ.

And I'm agnostic on the subject.

just for the record; i know a lot about spreadsheets.

Unproven.

when I was just out of college; i had to write the same damn
spreadsheets a dozen times a day... i finally figured out how to
automate it and now im making 8x as much money as i was back then.
meanwhile, you're 'scared to be seen as a programmer'.

I don't spend much of my normal workday programming (or writing
spreadsheet formulas), so it'd be misleading to call myself a
programmer.

And I suppose you had to keep writing the same spreadsheet so many
times until you got it right. Did you ever manage?

i dont think that you know the slightest thing about databases. I
mean.. why would you be a spreadsheet wimp if you knew ANSI-SQL?

Most of the spreadsheet tasks I have I can complete in a fraction of
the time it'd take me to define the tables I'd need to put the data
into in most databases. Access is lots easier, but still not as
efficient FOR ME.

and again-- just for the record.. when I say VB6 I include VBA and VBS.
VB6 IS here to stay whehter Microsoft likes it or not. I mean-- it's
by far the most popular language in the world...

VBA has an entirely different user base. And it *IS* likely to be
around for several more years. [I'm not going to worry until Microsoft
pulls the plug on XLM.]

VBS? Drop the first letter, and that about sums it up.

VB6 will probably be used by independent programmers and small software
development companies until Windows evolves to a state which VB6 can't
support. That's unlikely to happen in the next 10 years. So those
developers may go on using VB6 for a while. In house programmers, on
the other hand, have mostly stopped using VB6 already. Where I work,
they migrated to VB.Net over 2 years ago and have been busy since then
rewriting key applications in VB.Net.

As I see it Microsoft has two choices: let VB6 die (which will **** off
die-hard VB6 developers who don't want to move to VB.Net) or revive it
(which will **** off all the IT departments that have already invested
heavily in migrating from VB6). It's all a question of where the
*FUTURE* revenue will come from.

If Microsoft opts for the former, what are the VB6 die-hards going to
do? Some will stick with VB6 until the bitter end (unreliable revenue
stream, irrational developers). Some will switch to non-Microsoft
development systems (even if RealBASIC's business doubled, it'd still
be puny compared to Microsoft's remaining VB products). And some will
finally move on the Microsoft's successor products (more money for
Microsoft).

If Microsoft opts for the latter, what are the IT departments going to
do? Some will cease migrating to VB.Net and go back to using VB6. Some
will continue migrating. All will be very slow to adopt the next
Microsoft Great New Thing!

In other words, ****ing off the VB6 die-hards is likely to result in
less lost revenue than ****ing off IT departments. If so, VB6 will die
off within a decade no matter how popular it may once have been.

when Office12 comes out and if you can write VB.net inside of Excel and
Access- -then VB.net might have a chance.
....

Doubtful. Still VBA. [If only I could have access to native associative
arrays and regular expressions!]

VB6 isn't going away; it is never going away

Just as there are still some people using WordStar.

You can pry VB6 out of my cold dead hands after you shoot me.
Because i'll be using it until the day I die (until MS comes out with
something better and FASTER and EASIER).

You may be doing so for yourself, but the VB6 jobs are going to become
scarcer & scarcer.

i mean.. how many access databases use JAVA?

How many Access databases power web servers?

Do you have any comprehension that Access is the worlds most popular
database?

There may be more copies of Access in use than any other database
product, but unless most of the web servers running Apache are doing so
under Windows, they ain't running Access. And few banks or insurance
companies I'm aware of are using Access on their mainframes. In terms
of transaction counts, I suspect DB2, Oracle and, yes, SQL Server are
way ahead of Access. There are many more Ford Fiestas than there are
Mack trucks, but who's shipping goods using a fleet of Fiestas?

it's true Harlan.. there are more Access applications / databases than
Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server COMBINED.

If you count all the queries and reports on every machine running
Access, you're probably right. But if you mean in terms of either
transaction counts or system CPU time, Access is way behind. Also, your
'point' may be a good indicator that there may be A LOT of redundant,
duplicate queries and reports on Access machines.

how many spreadsheets use PHP and PYTHON?
....

Dunno about PHP and spreadsheets. It's a VBS killer, not a VBA killer.

Gnumeric and OpenOffice Calc are scriptable using Python. Any more
ignorant questions?