Foreword

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A guy walks into a bar and sees two well-dressed women in their mid-fifties talking to one another just within earshot. He hears one of the women saying, "What's your IQ? Mine is 155!" The other woman replies, "Really, mine is 149! How did you interpret the impact of Nelson's micro-economic theory on the development of post-Soviet Union Eastern Europe?" At this point, two men in athletic wear enter the bar in midconversation, catching the ear of our observer. The first man says, "I just had my IQ tested. I am a solid 115!" to which the second replies, "Excellent! My IQ was 108 last time I was tested. Say, who do you like for this Sunday's Giants/Dodgers game?" Not being a sports fanatic, the attention of our eavesdropper turns to two men in their late twenties sitting in a corner booth. He overhears the first man confess, "My IQ test results just came in. I only scored 63." Trying to console his friend, the second man replies, "Don't feel bad, my IQ is only 59. By the way, which is better: C++ or Visual Basic?"

VB is dead. Finally.

OK, so VB the tool is still alive. But VB as a derogatory label, a culture, an all-encompassing worldview, is dead as a doornail.

For me, the beginning of the end was the first edition of the book you are now reading. Prior to that point, VB was considered an absolute toy amongst most of my colleagues. Worse, VB users were considered to be the people not competent enough to get jobs in documentation, testing, or marketing. VB was often viewed as society's "safety net" that provided "workfare" for those who could not make it on their own as software developers.

And then came Ted's first book.

When developers asked me about good MTS programming books, I constantly found myself recommending Ted's book. At first, I apologized for the VB-related content in the book. "Just pencil in the semicolons if you need them," I would exclaim. However, I eventually grew tired of playing the role of "VB apologist" and decided to rethink my views. At that point, I came to the following realization:

We all are VB programmers in one way or another.

VB programmers are (correctly) portrayed as being blind to a set of issues many consider to be critical. If this is the litmus test for being a VB programmer, then Dim me As VBProgrammer. I care deeply about component integration, yet I am blind to T-SQL optimizations in SQL Server 7.0. My office mate just wrote a 400-page treatise on NT security, yet he couldn't tell you the difference between an unparsed general entity and an internal parameter entity if his life depended on it. In the information-overload world we live in as software developers, selective ignorance is the only way to survive.

Ted (unlike many writers, including myself) has embraced the selective ignorance chromosome that is present in all developers, not just those who have embraced the development tool that dares not speak its name. The first edition of this book demonstrated Ted's mastery of focusing the attention of the reader on the concepts that are important. Unlike the 800-page behemoths so common in this field, Ted's book was a digestible morsel of information that made the able developer more able to solve the problems at hand. This second edition brings Ted's story up to date with the current state of the practice in COM development and will be a valuable addition to the component software canon.

Don Box
Redondo Beach, California