Website, DB, & Software Developers

With all due respect to the late great Commodore Grace Hopper, I find the language too tedious to bother with, but then again, we wouldn't have made the leap to compiled code so early if she hadn't been a pain in the ass about making it happen. My favorite quote of hers is "It's easier to apologize than it is to get permission."

That said, when I was in college I was already a computer geek (I'm older than you by a few years). The CS students all came to me with their COBOL, Fortran and Pascal listings (the two of which I DO know well). If it was COBOL, I would just flip the 2" listing upside down and peel down the back page to look at the code. The format statements have nothing to do with logic errors, most of which were simple (like initializing a loop with 1 instead of 0).

If you're considering jumping to VB, I would recommend you go with C# instead. It isn't as straight forward a leap, but it will have greater longevity. I still consider VB to be a pro-typing language. As much as I resisted moving from C++ to C#, I do have to admit that the latter fits well with the VS10 environment and has some advantages such as out-of-scope memory management.

One last piece of advice. Only concentrate on the core routines which translate directly. Use your talent and imagination to create a more up-to-date interface and add new features at will. I loved WordStar, but I wouldn't want to be stuck with that now (sorry for the analogy, but it might not be far off).