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Have a programming question for blogger Justin James?

TechRepublic Programming and Development blogger Justin James has written several columns in response to questions members have emailed him. He's out of member questions, and he's interested in receiving more. So, if you have a specific programming question, please post it in this discussion. If Justin writes a column about your question (he'd offer you advice in the column), we'll post the URL to the column in this discussion. (Note: Justin will not necessarily offer advice to all questions submitted.)

Here are examples of Justin's reader response columns:

Frustrated by a coworker's use of old-school programming techniques
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=809

How to introduce high school students to programming
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=1511

Transition to .NET with this developer's tips
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=1097

10 tips to go from a beginner to an intermediate developer
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=1139

Thank you in advance,
Mary Weilage

Hi Justin. We have been introduced to VBScript in tech college. I can't see the use in this too much in web development except from the web servers side (configuring etc.), but I am obviously missing the point somewhere. What other uses does VBScript have in today's world?

Thanks,
Martin.

Your assessment of VBScript is dead on. It's currently used in the following situations:

* Classic ASP, which was superceded by ASP.NET nearly 10 years ago.

* Windows configuration/administration scripting, superceded by PowerShell in 2007 or 2008.

* Microsoft Office macros; Microsoft has been pushing hard for .NET to replace VBScript (which in this context, they call "VBA" but its the same thing) for years.

VBScript is not a "real world" language unless you are a system administrator or writing for Office, and both of those items are quickly being replaced. I suggest that you encourage your school to change to a more modern language, especially since VBScript teaches a lot of "bad habits".

J.Ja

Justin,
Is there any way to validate, programmatically (in any language except .net) an Active Directory user ID?

In other words, I'm looking for an quick way to determine if someone is still an employee without firing up the AD client.

Odd, given that the previous poster was asking about VBScript, but if you want to do it quick and easy without .NET, VBScript is the quickest, easiest way to do it. This looks like a good place to start: http://www.activexperts.com/activmonitor/windowsmanagement/adminscripts/usersgroups/users/

J.Ja

Hello Justin,

Read through your recent article on the Ruby on the rails. It was interesting and somewhat re-kindled my interested on Ruby on the rails. A couple of years ago I had began to look at it , but somehow lost the urge to pick up the language.
Could you please share some usefull websites for beginner's to start Ruby and the softwares required to get started. Thank you for the article.

Regards
Sriram