I'm A VB: James Kahl

 

·        How long have you been using VB?

I have used every version of Visual Basic since its inception.  So I guess for about 20+ years.

 

·        What industry do you work in?

Manufacturing/Engineering

 

·        How big is your development team?

There are about 20 of us, but most development is done individually rather than a group effort.

 

·        What kind of apps do you most commonly build?

I mainly write applications that combine with IVI Visa Interoperability to control power supplies and measurement devices to test printed circuit boards and other electronic devices.

 

·        What’s the most interesting app you’ve ever built?

To me every app is interesting because I am always doing something different, writing wrappers around IVI Visa device drivers, serial communication protocol wrappers, front end database applications, custom controls, test applications.

 

·        Please tell us about an app that you’re working on at the moment.

A simple data entry/order form that creates Bill Of Materials as Excel Spreadsheets, the BOM is then used to configure test software to ensure that correct voltages are applied and that only specific tests are performed.

 

·        What other technologies do you most commonly use?

VB6, C++, C#, SQL, XML

 

·        What are some of your favorite VB features?

With the creation of VB.NET the features that I like are the ones that bring VB closer and closer to a true object oriented language. Iheritance and Polymorphism, to name the two most important. Sub classing and threading are now easier to accomplish and much more stable in .NET than they were in previous versions.

 

·        What do you like most about VB as a programming language?

I have always liked it for its simplicity and rapid development.

 

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