Delphi programmer skill migration to VB.net

[GeppoDarkson]

Hi,
I'm a Borland Delphi programmer.
I have to make a VB.net project relating a company managment (invoices, orders, customers, etc).

I should say, I'm not so happy to leave Delphi, but I don't want to partecipate to the usual war between Microsoft and Borland, so I'm here to ask for some documentation, web sites, opinions or other material reguarding specific conversion of Delphi skills to VB & .net knowledge.


My skill consists of 8 years of Delphi developing and covers well also SQL-Server, IIS, and other Lan-Internet-System managment stuff.

What could be in your opinion a reasonable time to be "productive" ?

Is it true that in .net you have to split your application around the sistem putting some services under IIS, taking some data out of the database via XML, SOAP or other ways, etc ?
In other words, is it just an opportunity or is "the way" to do things in .net?

Any suggestion will be appreciated, except stupid sentence like "VB rules" without explanations of why.

Thank you,
Geppo Darkson.

 

[TomKane]

I was under the impression that delphi was going to sign up to the .NET framework - you may be able to stick with Delphi.

http://www.borland.com/news/press_releases/2002/08_29_02_Delphi7_shipping.html

 

[GeppoDarkson]

Hi,
the current release of Delphi (7) can "compile for .net",
the future release (8) will be (probably) fully .net compatible, so maybe I could write in VB, C#, Java, ..., and Delphi and pass everithings to the Common Language Specification (or directly to the Common Language Runtime), or interact in other ways with .net,

*** BUT ***

I have to do it in VB.net because of external requirements, so I have to leave Delphi by side,
but thank you for your help.

 

[GeppoDarkson]

Nice to meet you,
VB people,
<IRONIC>Thank you for the help.</IRONIC>

 

[RiverGuy]

Well if you're using SQL Server and IIS, .Net is probably the best for using those technologies, since they are MS-based.

.Net includes a native SQL Server namespace with connections, dataadapters, etc. Its better than useing OleDB in .Net.

I don't think it would take long to be productive. I've never used Delphi. But if you have any C or Java skills, it might be easier for you to transition to C# at first.