Some things are just best handled in-house.
Like backup programs, I made a backup program at work that limits the amount of backups happening over the network, forms queues if it needs to, and uses like 8 different methods to copy the files, on fails, it tries the next, all the way down to a byte by byte file copy. I needed the nonchalant attitude it has, like if it finds a dodgy file that it can't copy, it won't throw a fit, it'll just warn the user at the end, idiot proof is not the word for some of the software I've had to write.
I even made the company screensaver, so that people could have a screensaver, protect their PC, while we could still access it using a backdoor password. Depending on how you setup your network, standard windows screensaver security is fairly pointless.
My favourite has to be Letterbox though, it's a little internal email warning system, like we use Workgroup Mail, and that expunges a little file for each email, Letterbox studies these files so it can detect when the user has new email, regardless of what Outlook is doing. It means that rather than leaving outlook open all the time, it can be closed down and the user will still know when they have mail. It's used for internal systems too, like purchasing, basically when an internal database is waiting on a user's approval the user is notified through Letterbox.
Some projects are totally minor, but make the biggest impact. Like Reedink, silicon wafers bet probed to detect failing die, like the little bit that goes into a chip. This data can be immense, like 80mb easily, and with old DOS equipment that's a nightmare. So Reedink strips out these massive files, removes the passing die data leaving the failing die data, and splits the file into manageable chunks. Mind numbing stuff, but when you consider the implications it all makes sense. These filtered files are about 10 times quicker to process, if it takes 4 hours to process a wafer before, then it takes 30 minutes now - means an afternoon instead of a week to process a batch of wafers, in terms of manufacturing processes that's a huge improvement that should get me a decent salary increase in March
. It took like 2 hours to make one rainy afternoon, the equivalent software to do the same basic job goes for £20,000!.
It's funny, but I still mostly use VB4, it just appeals to me, the simplicity and clean look your apps can have, the language itself can be annoying, but in my book it's a great little package for quickly making applications that'll stay small and run on old PC's without a problem.
''Stick that in your text and scroll it!.''
