h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello Felonious...
I read some of your postings regarding visual studio.net and you seem very knowledgeable on it. I've just installed it on my win2000 machine and I'm flummoxed.
I used to be a programmer - in Clipper, mainly, but some added C code and some assembler, a little. I mean to indicate I'm schooled to some extent in programming. I work in the IT industry and usually do computer support, network admin, that sort of thing.
VSN has me very puzzled. First: My web server never gets up. Second: It is the default for .c or .cpp files but opens them with no indication of how I get it to compile them! Third: I can't get started creating web sites or pages - it just hangs when I choose a web template - probably, I suppose, because the web server hasn't started.
My machine is standalone. No network. No network card. The installation was kosher... everything, SP2, Security update, Components updated, Frontpage Extensions...
I've since installed Apache server and Perl so's I can make some progress and they're working fine.
What I wanted was a Visual C, a Visual Basic and a Web authoring tool. Because all I had before was Delphi - and Access Basic. I want to get back into programming and Delphi is good but Pascal oriented and Access Basic doesn't give an executable.
Visual Studio.Net currently seems to be an enormous white elephant on my system. The bits that do work and the IDE itself are the most awkward an non-intuitive i've ever run across - comparing them, for instance, to the Delphi IDE.
If you can point me in a direction where I can get a clearer understanding of what's happening here I'll much appreciate it.
And if you are too busy I will understand.

regards,

[email protected]

Oh, heavens, where to start??
First, I'm not very knowledgeable about VS.NET at all. I *am* knowledgeable about VB 6.0, which is what we use at work to write our systems.

First of all, since you are in support I suppose you know about starting IIS up on a W2K box. So make sure that the IIS service is running first. You might also check for viruses such as NIMDA (which got onto my machine and cause huge amounts of trouble). Also, check to see that you haven't run out of disk space.

Secondly, I suppose you have a lot of legacy code in C or C++ otherwise you wouldn't be so bothered. VS.NET encourages that one uses C#, which is basically a Java clone, in preference to C. You can also use VB.NET which is rather more verbose but equally as powerful.

I can't comment about how the IDE measures up to Delphi. We haven't yet purchased VB.NET at my workplace, but you could try downloading the .NET Framework SDK and a 3rd part tool such as SharpDevelop. this will allow you to do rudimentary applications. You can in theory write Windows Forms applications using this tool but it would be very long winded, believe me.

If you have any further queries then email me from the link on my page. I don't think I've been too much help actually.