“Is There An OSes For Dummies Book?”

I guess you’ve really laid out the chapters for a pretty fair-sized book!

I’d love to take a stab at a couple of your items – in no particular order.

I’d put forward that the modern assembly language is C++. C originally was designed as a successor to assembly. Until or unless C & C++ bifurcate appreciably, I think that C++ gives you all the power to get to the metal that C does – with a lot of additional horsepower for applications level work and well engineered software.

What is going on? Well, Vista is a Microsoft 1.0 release, so there will be growing pains. It is even more resource intensive than XP. It costs $$$. These three things alone have me recommending no change for XP users – if it works, no need to fix it.

And my Mac just works.

Meanwhile, Linux clients are looking better and better. and the prices for different distributions make it available to everyone. And it usually comes with a capable suite of applications just like you had in windows – OpenOffice for example. In terms of resource usage, to try Linux, I have used a Live version on a CD. That’s a complete, bootable OS for a modern system that is contained entirely on a CD. Not a DVD. It figures tons of things out automatically – like your networking. It just works. I’m very impressed and it will be a huge factor when XP reaches end of life (if not before then).

For an immediate direction to move (item 6), I’d move from VB6 to VB.Net. Then your going to have a chance to run on Linux under Mono (item 4). (And personally, I’d say switch to C# while your at it….)

As a practicing Software Engineer (about 20 years), I’ve never thought that a field that’s as new as this one would allow me to cling to an expertise and toolset for more than a few years without learning new tools, techniques, languages etc.

Pascal, Forth, C, C++, Vb, Java, C#, Ruby, JavaScript, *tml… It keeps it interesting to keep abreast and to keep looking for better tools. I have worked in all of these at one time or another. In many I would rank myself at the intermediate level and a couple I am expert. By making sure I stick to core principles for writing readable, maintainable, testable and tested code, I can produce useful and reliable products. Syntax is a detail I worry about well after I have validated the design. You don’t have to know everything about a language to use it effectively, but you do have to be excellent at knowing where to find answers, learning specific topics in depth quickly when needed, and knowing when and how to ask for help.

I think you are defeating yourself to say you have only one more learning curve ahead of you. I think you need to be working up a couple of learning curves all the time. It’s a lot like college and having 3+ different classes in a semester. I thinks it’s as important to know how to learn as it is to learn. Trite but true.

At the heart of your question lies the implicit assumption that there is but one answer. I don’t think that’s so. I make my living on the Windows platform. I won’t say I know everything, but I’m confident and tested in that area at work – I can find my way around the registry so to speak.

On the other hand I HATE dealing with Windows at home and wish all my machines could be Macs which give me much less trouble in that environment. And yet I only have one Mac because I can build and repair machines that run Windows for a lot less $$$. Thus my thinking about Linux. Which is all to convey the fact that computers are tools, we master them, they serve us and it’s usually life and business requirements that answer many of your questions and vary by circumstance.

But, I still like the book idea…!