Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. (c) Ruffin Bailey 2001-2021

I guess this is at least part of why programming is fun.

Why is programming fun?

First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design.

Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find it helpful.

Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principals built in from the beginning.

Fourth is the joy of always learning. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its solver learns something.

Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.

-- extracted from 'The Mythical Man Month' by Fred Brooks

Of course, that doesn't much dwell on why it isn't. If there's one thing programming's not, it's lasting. Oh, sure, there's code from the 1960-80's that needed ye old y2k fix way back when that was still screamin' along while most new apps were written in whatever the latest and greatest language was. But most of us never get to work on such important apps, and those that do don't get to create it from scratch. And even if you did create an app that'd be used for decades from scratch, what happens as soon as you leave the company? Ever gone back to look at your code after someone else has grabbed it and changed it? "Ah, man, why did you do it like *that*? That's a kludge! You've lost reusability!" And that's usually a best case.

Let's face it, not even Fred Brooks comes close to William Shakespeare -- or even John Donne. Though people might start building interactive fiction that approaches literature on the backs of your work, nobody remembers who made Mark Twain's paper.

(That said, the pens he used in Mysterious Stranger helped scholars pinpoint (har har) where he wrote what part of what draft. Purple meant Europe, I believe, since that's where he got the pen, etc. Sorry, it's been over ten years since I researched that paper... :^D)

Ack. Erased post. Back again. Don't ask how. Magic.

The GridLayout should be an easy thing to whip up in Windows.Forms land. I've seen a couple of attempts to bring Java's concept of Layout Management to .NET, and they are both pretty buggy and fairly complicated to fix.

So what if you only wanted a GridLayout and you didn't mind not having resizable controls and controls that overlap when the form's too small? Sounds simple, eh? It is simple.

Do note that this isn't a GridLayout as in ASP.NET, where GridLayout (in another embrace and CHANGE COMPLETELY) for MS means you can place controls on a grid with explicit x,y coords, even in an html page, just like you can in a Windows.Forms GUI RAD. No, that's not what we're doing at all. We're adding controls to your panel's Controls collection without any regard for spacing, and the GridLayout does the rest. Check the link, above. Instead of dragging to where you want it, we're letting the LayoutManager (look, a manager doing its job! give or take) do the formatting work.

So with that, I introduce the example/sample code "GridLayout made easy in VB.NET" (edited without warning). Smack this code into a form (or another control like a UserControl) and you're ready to go. Extend a form with only this code to have grid layouts all over the place. Turn appropriate vars into properties to feel better about yourself. Enjoy. (again, edited without warning; goofy formatting to fit my blogger template without wrapping)

Imports System.Windows.Forms Public Class PnlGridLayout Inherits Windows.Forms.Panel Public intRows As Integer = 0 ' how many rows there should be; 0 for any number ' (at least one, rows or cols, must be non-zero) Public intCols As Integer = 6 ' how many columns there should be; 0 for any number ' (at least one, rows or cols, must be non-zero) Public dblRequiredHeight As Double = 0 ' allows objects to pull how high this panel needs ' to be to display properly Public bFillColumn As Boolean = False ' make each control fill up all the space available ' in the horizontal Public intCellSpacing As Integer = 3 ' space between cells, hopefully Public Sub alignControls() Dim ctlTemp As Control Dim intCtrlCnt As Integer Dim intTempRows As Integer Dim intTempCols As Integer Dim dblRowHeight As Double Dim dblColWidth As Double Dim dblDistFromTop As Double = 0 Dim dblTallestControlHeight As Double = 0 dblDistFromTop = intCellSpacing ' have to have init'd at least one measuring stick for the grid ' to work. If Not (Me.intRows = 0 And Me.intCols = 0) Then '==================================================== ' figure out how many rows and cols we've got. If Me.intRows > 0 Then intTempRows = Me.intRows Else ' note int vs. common division usage; ' might get a few cases a little closer intTempRows = Me.Controls.Count / Me.intCols End If If Me.intCols > 0 Then intTempCols = Me.intCols Else intTempCols = Me.Controls.Count / Me.intRows End If '==================================================== dblColWidth = Me.Width / intTempCols dblColWidth = dblColWidth - Me.intCellSpacing dblRowHeight = Me.Height / intTempRows For Each ctlTemp In Me.Controls intCtrlCnt = intCtrlCnt + 1 With ctlTemp ' have it fill the column space entirely if ' preferred. If Me.bFillColumn Then .Width = dblColWidth - Me.intCellSpacing End If .Top = dblDistFromTop .Left = intCellSpacing _ + (dblColWidth * ((intCtrlCnt Mod intTempCols) - 1)) If ctlTemp.Height > dblTallestControlHeight Then dblTallestControlHeight = ctlTemp.Height End If ' fix last on row If (intCtrlCnt Mod intTempCols) = 0 Then .Left = dblColWidth * (intTempCols - 1) If dblTallestControlHeight < dblRowHeight Then dblDistFromTop = dblDistFromTop _ + dblTallestControlHeight + intCellSpacing Else dblDistFromTop = dblDistFromTop _ + dblRowHeight + intCellSpacing End If dblTallestControlHeight = 0 End If 'MsgBox(intCtrlCnt & " :: " & .Top & " :: " & .Left) End With Next If dblTallestControlHeight = 0 Then Me.dblRequiredHeight = dblDistFromTop ElseIf dblTallestControlHeight < dblRowHeight Then Me.dblRequiredHeight = dblDistFromTop _ + dblTallestControlHeight + intCellSpacing Else Me.dblRequiredHeight = dblDistFromTop _ + dblRowHeight + intCellSpacing End If End If End Sub Private Sub PnlGridLayout_Resize(ByVal sender As Object, _ ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Resize Me.alignControls() End Sub End Class

Oracle:

SQL Server

CREATE TABLE student_backup as SELECT * FROM student_admin.student

SELECT * INTO student_backup FROM student_admin.student