I have a dream - Good morning to VB world
Michael Fieg
Don Box (with apologies to Martin Luther King Jr.)
A half-score years ago, a great Programmer, in whose symbolic shadow we
stand invented Visual Basic. This momentous decree came as a great beacon
light of hope to millions of Programmers who had been seared in the flames
of withering detail. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of
manual memory mangement.
But ten years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Programmer is
still not free to VB. Ten years later, the life of the Programmer is still
sadly crippled by the manacles of dangling pointers and the chains of heap
corruption. Ten years later, the Programmer lives on a lonely island of
tedium in the midst of a vast ocean of potential productivity. Ten years
later, the Programmer is still languishing in the corners of American
society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here
today to dramatize an appalling condition.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day on the green hills of Redmond the sons of former
journalists and the sons of former computer scientists will be able to sit
down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the platform of Linux, a desert platform,
sweltering from the lack of development tools and decent debuggers, will be
transformed into an oasis of productivity and utility.
I have a dream that my two children will one day program in a world where
they will not be judged by the lack of semi-colons but by the content of
their code.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the Free Software Foundation, whose leader's
lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and
nullification, will be transformed into an situation where little VB modules
and classes will be able to link against little C programs and execute
together as shared components.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every variable shall be Dim'ed, every Sub and
Function shall be made fast, the tedious tasks will be made effortless, and
the DLL will be made COM, and the glory of the Code shall be revealed, and
all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the Tool. With
this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of drudgery a stone of
pleasure. With this faith we will be able to transform the dangling
references of our objects into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With
this faith we will be able to work together, to code together, to struggle
together, to go to PDC together, to stand up for VB together, knowing that
we will use VB one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a
new meaning, "My language, 'tis of thee, sweet grammar of simplicity, of
thee I sing. Language where new things are tried, Language of Bill Gates'
pride, from every mountainside, let VB ring."
And if Programming is to be a humane profession this must become true. So
let VB ring from the prodigious hallways of Xerox PARC. Let VB ring from the
mighty programming houses of India. Let VB ring from the heightening
financial firms of Wall Street!
Let VB ring from the snowcapped research labs of MIT!
Let VB ring from the energetic platform of Linux!
But not only that; let VB ring from all GPL'ed software!
Let VB ring from the flourishing Apache web server!
Let VB ring from every window manager and every widget set of GNOME. From
KDE, let VB ring.
When we let VB ring, when we let it ring from every platform and every
problem domain, from every CPU and every OS, we will be able to speed up
that day when all of God's children, rich men and poor men, Lawyers and
Housewives, Accountants and Flight Attendants, will be able to import type
libraries and sing in the words of the old Programmer spiritual, "VB at
last! VB at last! thank God Almighty, we have VB at last!"
Grüße aus Stuttgart
Michael