Bloo Loo Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Its a bit quiet at the mo, so after leafleting this morning I thought Id brush up on my programming and started a free course in VB. 10 minutes in, Ive made a form and linked it to SQL....but Im bored to death. What I need is a modern skill and I would like to program myself a simple database that is web based, ie a remote DB with a browser based front end....at least that would set a first waypoint to developing and maybe I wont fall asleep 10 minutes into doing it. Calendar capability would be good for filling in forms. I would be grateful for suggestions which one/combination of products I should try. I would like to advertise this new skill on vworker with my work proudly accessable from my website. Thanks in advance to the infinite knowledge keepers of HPC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Its a bit quiet at the mo, so after leafleting this morning I thought Id brush up on my programming and started a free course in VB. 10 minutes in, Ive made a form and linked it to SQL....but Im bored to death. What I need is a modern skill and I would like to program myself a simple database that is web based, ie a remote DB with a browser based front end....at least that would set a first waypoint to developing and maybe I wont fall asleep 10 minutes into doing it. Calendar capability would be good for filling in forms. I would be grateful for suggestions which one/combination of products I should try. I would like to advertise this new skill on vworker with my work proudly accessable from my website. Thanks in advance to the infinite knowledge keepers of HPC. Yet again I point people towards Wordpress and hosting via a US hoster who offers full Wordpress DB functionality. It will save you so much time and grief. Wordpress is beginning to become a tool that Corporates use. I suspect in the coming 18 months you will see more and more demand for Wordpress style skills at many business levels. What you are trying to do is very boring and, to be frank, you will be undercut by the thousands of boys and girls in Indian doing this. Only this morning I was chatting with a colleague of mine saying how the UK/US/Western IT market is now one of senior people here in the UK managing such projects but the work at the coal-face being done by people in India. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccc Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Are you wanting to start your own business ? Or IIRC you already have that ? Or want another job ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qetesuesi Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Its a bit quiet at the mo, so after leafleting this morning Leafleting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichB Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Azure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IWantItNow Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 ASP.NET MVC, jQuery and SQL Server. Also VB (all forms) suck. C# or Java, no scratch that...just C# Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porca misèria Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Forget learning something so specific as a language. If you can hack one, you can do another. Get yourself involved in some real-life open source community. Take a product you use, think of something you'd like to change in it (e.g. a new capability, a better way to do something, document the damn thing properly, ...) and set yourself the goal to make it happen. Once you reach the point of engaging with the core development team and offering contributions, you've got a real skill you can showcase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gigantic Purple Slug Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 While we're on the IT subject does anyone have any recommendations for an A3 laser printer ? My A3 inkject is a pain in the ass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloo Loo Posted January 21, 2011 Author Share Posted January 21, 2011 thanks guys. Yes VB is very boring. Special thanks to TMT and porca, yes differentiation is key. and thanks to other for your input. I do have a business and the IT side is for physical repairs, servers etc etc. Leafleting......yes, I had 200 let over from a paid drop, so popped them out...usually when I leaflet, its because its quiet..then something else comes along as well. I think you make your own luck. Spuring me on was a colleague being undercut by the vworker.com website...where part timers with jobs can do tasks for cash....Thought I d have some of that. This market is certainly changing. Its also one where "told you so" is rife...I lost a client of 10 years standing, down to the new buyer wanting to use a "name" for his hardware service. I saw a customer who worked there and she told me how they lost all the emails in one branch...thousands of emails and FSA required docs....I asked when they were getting them back online...they arent...the online backups sold by this "named" firm were never tested..indeed, never worked. 10 years I helped them...not one bit of data lost ever....through server migration after server migration....then 6 months after Im gone...tut tut. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloo Loo Posted January 21, 2011 Author Share Posted January 21, 2011 Do you mean VB as in VB6 or VB.net? If VB6 look at C# or VB.net as you can do all of what you want although .net is bloated. MS do a Developers version of the Action Pack which comes with 3 licences to MSDN so you can get your hands on Visual Studio2010 for example. Silverlight is probably better for the web if its just the web angle you want but I dont think it will be around for long even though it was only recently released on beta last year. Theres a bit of an internal tussle going in MS about which technology should become the dominate one, WPF, Silverlight and another one that escapes me. Codecharge is ok, template oriented so easy to knock up, or you might even be interested in WinDev (expensive) which can be deployed to most platforms not just the web. I guess it boils down to your individual needs and future requirements. FWIW. Thing is, I dont know what the needs are....thats down to clients...Im looking at Wordpress this weekend as what i hope to do, if i can think of something, is to have a site working that my clients and potential clients would say...hmm...Id like some of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloo Loo Posted January 21, 2011 Author Share Posted January 21, 2011 I've tried to find the link but cant at the moment but will pm you if I find it, but you need to lock Wordpress down, the Russians have a habit of popping onto sites running wordpress and using it for their own means, exploiting known loopholes. Id better not do a site featuring BP then..... that would be great...thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eek Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Yet again I point people towards Wordpress and hosting via a US hoster who offers full Wordpress DB functionality. It will save you so much time and grief. Wordpress is beginning to become a tool that Corporates use. I suspect in the coming 18 months you will see more and more demand for Wordpress style skills at many business levels. What you are trying to do is very boring and, to be frank, you will be undercut by the thousands of boys and girls in Indian doing this. Only this morning I was chatting with a colleague of mine saying how the UK/US/Western IT market is now one of senior people here in the UK managing such projects but the work at the coal-face being done by people in India. Sorry but I'm starting to see a lot of work return back to the UK. Given the recent inflation in Indian IT wages it seems for some companies it is becoming worthwhile to get people to do the work locally as while costs are higher, productivity and quality results in a cheaper product. One major client said last week that off-shoring was now costing £350-400 a day so it won't be long before the average £300 a day contractor is decent value again. That is not to say that people won't continue to offshore seeing it as the cheaper option, but it ain't as bad as it was 2-3 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Sorry but I'm starting to see a lot of work return back to the UK. Given the recent inflation in Indian IT wages it seems for some companies it is becoming worthwhile to get people to do the work locally as while costs are higher, productivity and quality results in a cheaper product. One major client said last week that off-shoring was now costing £350-400 a day so it won't be long before the average £300 a day contractor is decent value again. That is not to say that people won't continue to offshore seeing it as the cheaper option, but it ain't as bad as it was 2-3 years ago. Yes and no. Outsourcing IT to India has not worked. The future will be UK techie guys moving more into management of projects and overseeing the work done by by techies brought in from places like India. So, yes it is coming back and will come. I walked away from a potential £400 notes a day contract today - TA role - but did so because it had stress and killer written all over it. In the Welsh public sector. They wanted one person to do a role that is, at best, probably needs 3 senior TAs do and more likely a TA Design Authority team of 5 to 6 experience people. I run ot by several IT colleagues and a few IT HPCers and, as tempting as the money was, it was a killer role re stress so I walked away. When you say that a client is saying off-shoring work to India is costing £350 - 400 per day can you detail that please? Is that the cost of one boy in India or the cost of the project per day in India? If the latter then it is still cheap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
petetong Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 If you want to try something a bit different, which you can develop full blown web applications with rather than just web sites and improve your object oriented skills to boot try: seaside A continuations based web application framework. No need for template languages or html. Just smalltalk and css file. Live code debugging, i.e. the code that is running, no compile/deploy etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wahoo Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 Chuck it all in. Get some brushes and oil paints and immerse yourself in artistic pursuits. Grow your hair long and get a ponytail. Grow pot and invite friends around to discuss how big the Universe is. You won't make any money, but you will be as happy as hell. (Trust me.......) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SNACR Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 While we're on the IT subject does anyone have any recommendations for an A3 laser printer ? My A3 inkject is a pain in the ass. The meaty HP laser jets for large workgroups are good. Anything designed for the small business/home market will be a piece crap with a high cost per copy and slow output. We bought half a dozen out of the Viking catalogue, through laziness, and they were unspeakably sh1t - seem to think they were Epsons or Lexmarks. The big HPs are pricey new but look to be plenty on eBay secondhand which will still be loads better than most new. Will get the model numbers off ours tomorrow, if I remember, the are quite big two man lift type lumps though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloo Loo Posted January 22, 2011 Author Share Posted January 22, 2011 Chuck it all in. Get some brushes and oil paints and immerse yourself in artistic pursuits. Grow your hair long and get a ponytail. Grow pot and invite friends around to discuss how big the Universe is. You won't make any money, but you will be as happy as hell. (Trust me.......) Im afraid Im a squares and rectangles man.. i can visualise 3D, but my colour co-ordination is 100% shite. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikhail Liebenstein Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 Azure. Could be the fastest way to make a million squid if you can come up with the right application Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Spart Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 Its a bit quiet at the mo, so after leafleting this morning I thought Id brush up on my programming and started a free course in VB. 10 minutes in, Ive made a form and linked it to SQL....but Im bored to death. What I need is a modern skill and I would like to program myself a simple database that is web based, ie a remote DB with a browser based front end....at least that would set a first waypoint to developing and maybe I wont fall asleep 10 minutes into doing it. Calendar capability would be good for filling in forms. I would be grateful for suggestions which one/combination of products I should try. I would like to advertise this new skill on vworker with my work proudly accessable from my website. Thanks in advance to the infinite knowledge keepers of HPC. Hey BlooLoo. While you can set up the form in VB you might also like to look at Microsoft Infopath which comes with Microsoft Office. This allows you to create forms that can connect and interact with Web Services, SQL Server, Access, SharePoint etc. The interesting thing about Infopath is that it has Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) SDK built in, allowing you to code Infopath applications in VB and C# rather than merely VBA. Microsoft has already announced its intention for VSTA to replace VBA. VBA is essentially VB6 for Office. Microsoft stopped supporting VB6 in 2005 so it comes as something of a relief to Office Developers that finally they can exploit the .Net framework in their applications. If you want to use VSTA outside of Infopath - processing say other Office applications - you can download the VSTA SDK free from Microsoft. You can use it to create WebServices without having to resort to Visual Studio. The great thing about Infopath is that with just a little training almost anyone can create forms that run in a browser that interact with databases that reside elsewhere, be it on a network server or a web server. If you're looking to get other skills I also recommend learning Microsoft SharePoint. SharePoint is an application that enables you to create and administer websites from templates, enabling collaboration among groups, including features such as wikis and blogs. The Windows SharePoint program is available as a free trial download from Microsoft but the installation process is a bugger. You'll need Windows 7 or Windows 2008 Server and there's a whole bunch of steps you'll need to follow to get the install perfect. You can also install Microsoft Office SharePoint Server which lays on top of Windows SharePoint Server aloowing communication between Office applications and Sharepoint. You may also want to consider looking at Office 2010. Excel now has a facility to allow writing of mathematical equations that Excel can then interpret and process - useful for Quants, Actuaries and other professional mathmos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloo Loo Posted January 22, 2011 Author Share Posted January 22, 2011 Thats really neat that infopath. funny, how you use a product like office for years then find theres a bit you've never clicked on. Thanks for the tip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Spart Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Thats really neat that infopath. funny, how you use a product like office for years then find theres a bit you've never clicked on. Thanks for the tip. In Office there's also Groove too which allows for offline collaboration. You might want to Google stuff like "Visual Studio 2010 Training" or "SharePoint Training" and such like. Microsoft offer loads and loads of training resources absolutely free including videos, tutorials etc. Get yourself a jump start on the competition! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccc Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 An IT PM working for someone like RBS thorugh somewhere like Infosys may cost around £150 per day - all in. Well this was the cost about 2 years ago. Perhaps changed since then. At the time a UK contractor would have cost about £450 including agancy cut. Big difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hayder Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 DJANGO with GOOGLE APP ENGINE. if you want something more "business oriented" go for openerp.com / python. no need for SQL in either as all is handled through ORM. All you need is python and imagination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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