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Questions

  1. So Billy, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you've been doing in the last few years in the .NET community.
  2. And I understand that you have a new book coming out, I believe third edition of one of your previous books?
  3. And you and I are together in the guidance about the patterns & practices group with Keith Pleas and Rocky Lothka and so forth. What interests you about the patterns & practices stuff, about the application blocks? What gets you interested about that kind of stuff?
  4. Do you think the .NET developers can leverage--you mentioned the patterns that the Java guys had gone through--Do you think they can leverage the experience that the Java developers and avoid some of the same mistakes?
  5. The first one down the trail has to stumble a few times before we figure out were the bumps are?
  6. So I've got to ask, will the C#, the VB guys, ever get to the point where we can stop arguing over these language wars: What should I use C# or VB? and start to work together on projects? Or are shops destined to be either C# or VB, but never both?
  7. Do the C++ and the VB jokes, do they help or do they hurt this whole tension between the two communities?
  8. Do you think the VB community has things to teach the C# group, the .NET developers in general? You mentioned having living the runtime and so forth, do you think they have a lot of stuff they can teach those guys?
  9. So how significant is it to make the jump between VB6.0 unmanaged COM code, to VB.NET VB7.0 managed code? How much of significance is that?
  10. So what one feature would you like to see VB, VB7.0, VB8.0, future versions of Visual Basics, what one feature would you like to see them incorporate into the language?
  11. So, what would you do? Would you introduce new keywords, new libraries? Bake data into VB somehow?
  12. Do you think VB needs to incorporate more databaase-ish features, not just the data dictionary, but do we need to be able to express queries directly out of the language or is ADO.NET sufficient at that level?
  13. You mentioned the concept of the smart client, the rich client, and so forth. I know this is an area that you are particularly interested in. You want to talk to us a little about the rich client, what is it, what does it imply, stuff like that?
  14. Do you think the world is really coming to accept the notion of the smart client, or is this just a collection of early adaptors who are following it and corporate America is still infatuated with the browser?
  15. Do you think programmers will be able to make this shift to smart clients and do you think your average guy who's been writing web apps for the last six years in going to be able to make the jumps to smart clients? Or do you think that they've already known how to do the rich client/smart client stuff and this is just a return to old roots?
  16. I want to go back to something you said at the very start of the interview, you mentioned in passing that you were a Software Legend, something that I'm not sure many people know about you. What's it like being a Software Legend and how did all that come about?
  17. Well, you're in with some pretty interesting company, David Chapell, and Juval Lowy, and, I don't even know who all was the Software Legends. Chris Sells--
  18. Billy, thank you for your time and I'm looking forward to doing more of the guidance about patterns & practices stuff with you and good luck with your future projects.