Unlocking Microsoft C# V 2.0 Programming Secrets (Wordware Applications Library)

What does all of this computer activity mean to you, the programmer of the 21st century? These are the most important personal inferences if you choose to enter the programming world:

• With the advent of true structured programming and true object-oriented programming, combined with the Microsoft IDE as posed in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, the average programmer will be relieved of the responsibility of generating 90 to 95 percent of the source code that he would have generated 30 years ago. The focus of computer programming efforts at software corporations will turn to combining existing packets of code into usable end products that make life easy for the user of the software (the customer). Whatever task a digital computer program is asked to do, there will probably be a prebuild that meets the need.

• These prebuilds will be presented to you, the programmer, within the confines of the IDE, and it will be necessary that you learn how to use them. The size of computer programs will not be an important factor in their design in the future. You will spend less and less time in the actual coding of software to meet the buyer s requirements and more and more time investigating the availability of prebuilt code that will do the job for you (with no necessary long- term testing of deliverable products).

• The number of computer programmers who will be gainfully employed in the preparation of commercial software will decrease somewhat in the next 20 years because the productivity of individual programmers is expanding so rapidly . Those who migrate to the large corporations (like Microsoft, Borland, Oracle, Computer Associates, Corel, etc.) will find the greatest opportunities to expand their knowledge of the industry. Smaller software companies are constantly being bought out by larger companies.

• Many of the programs that were written in the 1980s to meet specific requirements of software buyers will now be met by wiring together the capabilities of more basic computational and data processing machines, like databases for example. Database experts will revolutionize the financial and banking industries, if they have not already done so.

• The federal government continues to be the biggest buyer of new software for its agencies, particularly the Department of Defense. Only the federal government is willing to invest large sums of money to reinvent large software programs every decade ” commercial business will not spend these moneys for perceived gains in productivity in the workplace. If the federal government goes out of the software procurement business, American programmers will suffer greatly.

In the next chapter we discuss the main platform in which you will work ” the Microsoft IDE.