D'oh, as my Eldest Yi Number One Son would say.

I got a development laptop but delayed getting Visual Studio with MSDN because I need to better manage my finances, and I need neither toy for my six day week job as a LaoShih (teacher) in dear old Hong Kong.

So I downloaded and installed Visual Basic Express.

But then I asked myself, well why not get as another interim product, C Sharp Express?

My experiences in C Sharp development for .Net in 2003 on the job showed me that my investment in writing the tools, in VB, that support the Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler wouldn't be lost, since with exceptions (optional parameters, which I'd stopped using long ago in favor of overloads), my utilities.DLL and related tools interoperate with C Sharp code seamlessly.

So last weekend I installed C Sharp express. It is very cool, and on the ferry this morning I was in hog heaven, listening to Putumayo Asian Lounge and coding C#.

I shall miss the With statement which allowed me to show focus on a structure but little else about the syntax of VB. Although it has long been structured and complete it is replete with chunky words.

I know I was ready to swear off Microsoft development a few months ago but practically I need to stay the course for a while, in part to meet an old committment to improve the published compiler.

As I'd mentioned in my response to Donna, my "Office" suite shall be Open Office and Sun owes me a refund for Office Star.

Although Open Office does generate files that open and display the same way in "real" office applications, its developers, working outside the Microsoft-clunky paradigm, have made some elegant changes. There appear to be Java macros, for example, and the file save button dims when the file is bonafide saved, which frees the anal-compulsive from repeated trips to that button.

The focus now is on developing staged tools on the way to Spinoza, a new programming language, and improving the compiler, and releasing articles at this site on those tools. I've noticed that my MS/DOS code and article was far more popular than my political rants. Gee, wonder why.