What CS at UNCA thinks of COM

[Paul Breen]

I'm a junior at UNCA and just for FYI I thought I would pass this along. This is advising week and I have talked to three Phd's in the Computer Science department making a point to mention Powerbasic and COM technology. None of them had heard of Powerbasic or expressed the slightest interest in it. All three were familiar with COM and used to use it but all advised me to move to a different technology for employment reasons mainly.  The point that interested me the most was that none of them had much passion for one language or technology or another, to them programming was programming and they had moved from c++ to Java more because of demand than any other reason. None of them used the following words but the message was if you are not doing this for fun then go where the money is.

[Eros Olmi]

In some sense, that reply is not so wrong. What if they would suggest to go with something like PB (or other languages) and than you will not be able to find a job? They cannot be blamed if they suggested to go where the money was. But if they are so concentrated on money, maybe they have lost contact with other aspects. Also consider that not intellectually honest people tend to move the attention to what they know more otherwise in unknown fields they would lose their "pro" status.

From a Professor I would expect a little more. Programming is not a mechanical aspect. If so, all programming stuff would be in charge of some automatic / robotic system. Programming is more: is knowledge of many things and technologies, is passion, is open mind, is the ability to choose the right tool for the specific job, is the ability to solve problems regardless the language used.

Anyhow, here (Italy and in general EU) it is the same. Some month ago I went into a big library dedicated to Informatics here in Milan to find some books on COM and on writing compilers. I was not able to find any of them. Book shop was full of Java, .Net, PHP, Ruby, Python, C++, Abap, even game programming and a lot of books on 3D applications like Cinama4D, Maya, Blender, ...
So I asked. Reply was: COM? That is old technology, we do not sell anymore books on that subject.
I replied: well 90% of the world is driven by Windows systems and COM is there everywhere both on client and server side. All .Net is based on COM interoperability. How can it be? From the other side: silence! Ok, thanks.
I will not mention on books about writing compilers: nothing.

This just to say you have to find your way. You have to be open mind especially at the stage where you are. Be with one foot into the money side and the other in the passion side. Study all what you can but be very very strong in one/two areas. Be pragmatic in your job but at the same time follow your passions. Sooner or later your passions will have something to do with your job and at that time you will be the best.

Forgot to say: if you want big money and little study, consider Abap (SAP language): few keywords, you can study in few days, but companies having SAP systems get crazy with it. With Abap you can develop SAP applications and reporting. There is a big demand all over the world.
I'm just joking here (even if the above is the truth, you can Google for +SAP +Abap and you can see) to say the road for money can be many and not just Java and C++.

Ciao
Eros

[Frederick J. Harris]

On April 19, 2008 Paul Breen wrote...

I have given up on PowerBasic adopting oop, they don't even see the need for projects.

You only needed to wait a few more months Paul!

In terms of your COM comments, I didn't realize you were a student!  If I was 30 years younger I suppose I'd be looking at it from the standpoint of the job market's current demands too.  But at my point in the game I look at it more like Eros does, that is, learning the things that interest me irregardless of anything else pretty much. 

I never really looked much at COM in the nineties because at that time I was mostly learning SDK Api style programming in C and Visual Basic programming where one had all the functionality of COM without really having to have a clue about all the really sophisticated things VB was doing behind the scenes.  Then what with one thing and another (mostly .NET) I gave up on VB and came over to PowerBASIC where my SDK skills found a good home.  However, I really missed in PB all those fancy ActiveX controls that were so brainless to use in VB.  Then Jose showed up and dazzled everyone with what he could do in PowerBASIC with COM and that finally allowed one to produce PowerBASIC apps as neat and full featured as those of VB!

So the COM interests me simply because its there and something challenging to figure out.  And while I havn't mastered it all yet, from what I believe Jose has said, its fairly fundamental to .NET and can inter-operate with it.  So I doubt any of the input you would put into it would be wasted.