Having trouble understanding how to download FreeBasic.

[v3cz0r]

I'm glad FB worked for you, many QB quirks (or "features" for some) weren't implemented, nor will, as they won't work in a 32-bit environment -- or because only M$ knows really the black-magic used on some functions and statements, nevermind..

[Dr_Davenstein]

Moneo, I'm just curious. Did the program do something useful for your business, or was it like a screensaver/demo?

[Moneo]

Moneo, I'm just curious. Did the program do something useful for your business, or was it like a screensaver/demo?

The 100 line program actually did something useful. Let me tell you the story.

For a year, the company tried at least 4 software packages that were supposed to collect an installed software inventory of their 350 networked PC's. They all failed in one way or another. So, they took the inventory manually, PC by PC, which took 3 months.

I came up with the idea of writing and installing a batchfile on each PC, which was launched at PC startup by the Windows Scheduled Task feature. The batchfile does a REGEDIT and an IPCONFIG onto a text file, filters out the extra stuff using FIND, and deposits the list of installed software to a uniquely PC-identified text file onto a file server.

The manager of the dept that needs the software inventory had no way of gathering all the text files from the file server into one giant fixed format file that he needed. So, the QB program I wrote was compiled in FB and installed on his machine so he could obtain the fixed format file. He could not run any MSDOS or 16 bit program. That's why FB was crucial.

We ran a pilot, and it works fine. Now they're gonna set it up to run on all 350 PC's. Too bad I'm not going to be there to see the fruits of my labor, because today was my last day at the company.
The manager said he would let me know.
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[relsoft]

Aw that sucks. But hey, yousave their asses. :*)

Good luck with your new job!

[Moneo]

Aw that sucks. But hey, yousave their asses. :*)

Good luck with your new job!

Thanks for your thoughts, Relsoft. Actually, I don't have a new job lined up. I'm looking at doing some freelance programming, and maybe selling my software inventory solution to other companies. It's amazing how much unlicensed software is out there. If companies don't do an inventory and cleanup this situation, they could be in big trouble.
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[relsoft]

I wouldn't be surprised to see them begging you to come back after 2 months just to fix things up. :*)

[Moneo]

Yeah, Relsoft, that's quite possible. They just don't have a programmer's mentality for solving problems.

Imagine, there are 70 people in the Technology department, of which about 7 are programmers from an outsourcing outfit. Being expensive, these programmers are kept busy mostly on maintenance of Intranet ASP applications.

The rest of the department does things manually. They claim using "databases", which actually are Excel spreadsheets and about two people use Access. These "databases" are used about as manually as you can get.

So, when they need to process any of the data that they have collected on their "databases", they're stuck, and resort to doing it manually somehow.

What has happened to Technology, which we used to call Systems? Systems departments used to be mostly programmers, and some operators. Now, they devote themselves to Infrastructure, Resource Mgmt, Asset Mgmt, Information Security, Threat Mgmt., etc. There are no more in-house programmers any more. This is the new trend.
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[Dr_Davenstein]

Is it possible that you could do contract programming for them, kinda like the outsourcing they do? You should whip up a database program using FB, take a demo to them and name your price.

[Moneo]

Good idea, Dr., thanks.

What exactly do you mean by "whip up a database program"? You don't mean an Excel or Access replacement, do you? What do you have in mind?
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[Dr_Davenstein]

Basically I just mean something to make accessing the database really easy and fast. I'm not sure what kind of work you're doing, but it sounds like you could squeeze a bit 'o' money out of 'em, if you tried. Hey, it's a corporation, So what?