Now the average PC user has absolutely no need to cut any code and the closest they come to programming might be creating a spreadsheet template or two.

There are still a lot of people (now called software developers) who continue to cut code -- but I'm wondering exactly what tools they're using these days?

While Visual Basic used to hold the crown for small to medium-sized one-off application development, it has faced some fierce competition from more capable tools such as Borland's Delphi, Sun's Java and C/C++ derived languages making extensive use of large class and template libraries.

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So, if you're in the code-cutting business, what's your tool/language of preference, and what's the tool/language you're forced to use in your day-job?

Is Microsoft's C# lining up to take over as the pre-eminent programming language for the Wintel platform or is something else waiting in the wings?

Howe well served are the open-source community with tools?

GCC was one of the few choices for those looking to cut fast code under Linux but if my memory serves me correctly, Borland played around with a release of its Delphi package on that platform -- albeit with mixed results.

Is C/C++ still the main programming language for Linux developers or, as OSS becomes a bigger factor in the commercial world, is there an increased demand for 3GLs?

Have intranet-based systems using browsers as a user's front-end overtaken the custom-application architecture for database systems?

I'm sure there are a goodly number of people who'd be interested in finding out just what others are doing and what they're doing it with.

Please post your responses to the forums.

The Spyware Plague
According to a report published last week, spyware is rampant on the average Net user's PC -- but we knew that didn't we?

Despite trying to educate her and installing firewall plus anti-virus software, I find myself having to reformat my daughter's PC every few months because it ends up loaded with spyware and adware.

I see no reason therefore, to believe that the average Net user's machine is any better condition.

We're told that over 50% of all email traffic is now spam -- I wonder what percentage of other Net traffic is generated by spyware/adware?

Every now and then I stop to think how much faster and cheaper the Net would be if we could eliminate all the unwanted and unnecessary traffic that spamming and spamware produces. Remember that when you pay your ISP bill next time :-(

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