Windows 7 Telnet is not Recognised

This is so annoying! You go to use telnet on Windows 7, via the command prompt, and you get 'telnet' is not recognized as an internal or external command. There are loads of articles on how to enable telnet on Windows 7 (here's one of many!).

But after having enabled it in programs and features, I was still getting the not recognised error. I checked that I had the telnet.exe file in the C:\Windows\System32 and I did. So I double clicked it and sure enough it pops up and works.

The only other difference is that I need to remember to use the o command to open a connection:

Telnet> o my_domain

I Forgot What Access Was Like...

I haven't used MS Access for a fair while now. There was a time when I used to have use it loads. Thankfully not so much now. The more the years have gone on the more the glorified filing system has got annoying. I remember the good old days of 97 when it did what it said on the tin and didn't try to be too clever for it's own good.

I have had the unfortunate opportunity of using it again today in anger. What a ball-ache! That much of a ball-ache that I decided to blog while I, once again, wait for this update query to run (which would take a matter of seconds in SQL Server). 20 minutes in and I'm slightly bored!

That coupled with my previously stated hatred of IIf, that got right on my tits! So another annoyance to add to that is that you can only have up to 6 nested IIf statements - great! I needed 36. Switch was no good either - that only goes up to 15 (at least in the query editor anyway).

So regular crashes and constant "not an updateable query" messages later - I'm still waiting... Roll on tomorrow so I can get back to a real database and a proper programming language!

Rant: VB.NET and IIf

Yes - another rant about VB. I really do dislike it the more I use it and I've been using it for too long! This time it's IIf that's getting on my wick!

Why can't VB have the "normal" inline If like real programming languages
x = (a == b ? 1 : 2) and not this stupid IIf function?

The problem I have (and I'm sure everybody else who VBs has), is that IIf is a function and therefore evaluates it's parameters first. Which then means this:

x = IIf(String.IsNullOrEmpty(textbox.Text), Nothing, Double.Parse(textbox.Text))

fails and has to be changed to this:

x = Nothing
If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(textbox.Text) Then
    x = Double.Parse(textbox.Text)
End If

OK, I know I can change it round a bit to make fit one line a bit more, but that's not the point. Come on MS, give us a real inline if...

Grrr!!

Rant: VB.NET and Arrays

I can't take it any longer and I have to air my serious frustration with VB.NET and the way it makes you handle arrays - aarrrggghhh!

In all the languages I have come across and know it is only VB that declares arrays wrongly. There's no possible reason why an array declared with 3 elements should have 4. it's stupid!

Dim myArray(1) As String
myArray(0) = "1"  'Most languages would stop here - not VB!
myArray(1) = "2"

This is hard for me to accept - it so annoys me :@ But, don't cut off the hand that feeds the mouth and all that rubbish. So I keep quiet and truck on...

The bullet in the head came recently when I wanted to resize an array. So being a good boy I used the Array.Resize method. This is what caused the rant...VB has double standards!

I wanted to add an element to myArray(1) to make it myArray(2). So on the basis of the Dim statement I did:

Array.Resize(myArray, 2)

FAIL! You have to do:

Array.Resize(myArray, 3)

VB - make your frigging mind up!!
I know, I know...I should use an ArrayList, but I was dealing with someone else's code so was stuck with stupid VB arrays - grrr!