Hi all, I've been working at a pretty big company for a few months now and my performance review is coming up soon. I think it's a good time to ask for a raise (I didn't do a very good job negotiating my salary at my interview). The company I work for has an IT department of around 15-20 people, but only a few of them are developers, others are mostly help desk and networking. This company is fair big, with 1000+ employees all over the US. This was my first job right out of college (BS in Comp Sci). I wanna know what's salary range I should be looking at. here's some more info: I think I've been doing a good job with all my assignments. I've completed 2 projects assigned solely to me, without too much supervision (I basically have to figure out a lot by myself). My project manager is very please with my performance on these 2 projects. I've also helped out with some bug fixes and add-ons on our major app. I've always ask for more work once I'm done w/ whatever I've at hand (no idle time for me). I've never been late to work and work at least 8hrs a day, sometimes more even I don't get pay OT. (of coz I kinda make sure my boss know I work late, like send them an email(with time stamp) saying I'm done w/ the work or something right before I leave) I've done a lot of search on the internet to find out what I should expect, but mostly it's from Salary.com, and I doubt that it's very accurate (Programmer I makes 51k, median? that's a little high I think) Any comments are greatly appreciated. TIA

Ah! Great tip! totally forgot about the using statements :D Thanks a Lot!

Hi all the experts in Code Project, I've a problem with returning the value returned by ExecuteScalar function under OleDbCommand. Here is a code sample. ... cmd.CommandText = searchSqlstr; long result = Convert.ToInt64(cmd.ExecuteScalar()); connection.Close(); return result; Is there a way to rewrite this code so that I DO NOT need the 'result' variable? since we always have to close the connection, if I write: return Convert.ToInt64(cmd.ExecuteScalar()); it would be a bad idea right? So is there a trick to do this? Thanks a Lot

If it Serializes, Compresses, Encrypts and Sends an Object over a network... then it should be 4 different classes :)

I think there's nothing you can do to stop crackers to crack your software. Even if you have the strongest encryption or online verification to protect your software period. There's always a way for crackers to crack it. (just like bugs keep creeping into your software, you can't avoid them all.) I think for those who use serials/cracks/keygens in order to use your software, is that they're Not sure if they'd like to spend that kinda $$ to buy your software yet. Or they don't really need it, but it will be kinda handy to have your software installed just for a few times of use. Or they're just too poor to buy your software, price for PC is cheap nowadays, but when you add a copy of OS like XP or whatever, some office tools, some other software tools, you've already spent over $1000, not many ppl out there can just keep buying every software they need. Sometimes, software Upgrades cost customer more $$ when they should get all those "Upgrades" for free or those "upgrades" shouldn't even Be there, the software should be "PERFECT" in the first place. Piracy a matter of education, product quality, etc... you cannot stop it by just putting stronger encryption keys or other form of protections to your software. I think if you made a real solid product, ppl will feel sorry to not buy it. In that case you don't need to put any protection on your product.