Remembrance of Writers Past

Readers long for VSM authors of years past who wrote practical, useful articles on current technologies.

• By Readers of Visual Studio Magazine
• 03/01/2005

Letters to Visual Studio Magazine are welcome. Letters must include your name, address, and daytime phone number to be considered for publication. Letters might be edited for form, fit, and style. Please send them to Letters to the Editor, c/o Visual Studio Magazine, 2600 El Camino Real, Suite 300, San Mateo, CA 94403; fax them to 650-570-6307; or e-mail them to [email protected].

Remembrance of Writers Past
I have nothing against the current crop of writers in VSM, per se. Mr. Thews is pleasant enough, and I sometimes find a nugget I can apply to something I'm doing today. But Patrick Meader's Editor's Note commemorating those who helped make the magazine a success left me nostalgic for thicker magazines that regularly clocked in at 120 pages ["Thanking VB's Heroes," January 2005]. Most of all, it made me yearn for the days when the pages of VSM were filled with writers like Bill Storage, Matt Curland, Francesco Balena, Roger Jennings, Andrew Brust, and Karl Peterson. All are dearly missed by this reader.

As I read Mr. Meader's list, I wanted to add a couple others: Chris Barlow and Stan Schultes. Both of these gentlemen wrote what was ostensibly the Getting Started column, and both of them provided solutions that far exceeded my expectations of what a Getting Started column should contain. Even in its pre-.NET versions, VB was so broad in its scope that no one could ever hope to master it all, and Mr. Barlow and Mr. Schultes wrote articles that consistently provided nice, practical entry points to new technologies. Another author I miss is Bob Beauchemin. He wrote your SQL Server column for perhaps a year, before dropping out of the magazine. What I liked about Mr. Beauchemin were his articles that assumed you used Oracle with VB ? you know, like most of us, I daresay. Oh, and while I'm at it, I'd like to salute Jonny Anderson, another name I haven't seen in quite a while. His articles on the traveling salesman problem and genetic algorithms were not the most practical pieces I ever read in the magazine, but they were fun and highly entertaining, and I wish VSM would run more articles like his.

I've been a longtime reader of the magazine. My employer has carried it for ages, and I've subscribed myself, off and on. I've always liked it, but less so lately. I suspect the decreased page counts are a big part of the reason for this. And, although I hadn't really thought about it until I read Mr. Meader's Editor's Note, so are the writers VSM employs. I don't know where they are today, but it sure would be nice to see some of those veterans from VSM's past pop in to talk about current technologies from time to time. I'm sure they have a lot to add on the subjects of VS.NET and Whidbey.

Cliff Henson, Schaumburg, Ill.

Patrick Meader's January Editor's Note contained a list of great writers who helped make the magazine a success. I couldn't help but think of Deborah Kurata and her Programming With Class column as I read this. Given that object-oriented programming is more important than ever under .NET, I wouldn't mind seeing that column return, but updated to take advantage of the many object-oriented features that .NET introduced, including inheritance. VSM seems determined to explore advanced topics such as Web services or the latest features of Whidbey, but it does itself and its readers a disservice by not covering the basics of programming, as well.

Mary Clarke, Boulder, Colo.