kropes

Maybe off the track a little.. but my suggestion is to forget programming for the individual computer, as in making an application that resides on the computer itself. Learn about building web based applications. ASP, Javascript, html, ADO database access (ms sql, my sql, etc)

I have been programming for 27 years now. I have seen a few triends... now see a trend (and i think this will last a long time) to more distributed applications, and web based applications where users log into a website and perform all of their office related functions and communications there. Its in a way a return to the old school days of a true client server application.. In this case the server is a web site and the client is the browser.

My org, we design web based database software that homeless shelters use to manage all of their day to day operations. Amazing what we can accomplish with a single point of code installation on a web server and over 200 users accessing the web site to input client data. We only have to worry about a single computer running the most recent code. and make sure its compatible with the most popular browsers... no special concerns about the amount of memory, type of video drivers/cards, size of hard drives, etc... the bottom line is if the clients computer can get to the internet.. it will run our software.