Here is one fellows opinion: http://noperfectprogram.wordpress.com

There is a saying that goes something like "you can tell how smart someone is by how much they agree with you". Kudos to every one of these bad coding habit comments! I can tell every one of you has not only developed, but MAINTAINED real life code!!! I would like to make one more statement in favor of good comments. In the classical book by Fred Brooks (The Mythical Man Month), he stated "always throw the first version away". When I am about to code something non-trivial, I almost always write the comments first, as I consider that my "first version". I figure that if I cannot describe in words what I need to do, then I probably can't describe it in code either.

Hi Chris, I wanted to send you a quick note to say how much I appreciate this response. I have been thinking about it ever since I read it last night, but my work schedule is such that I've not had the time yet to give a thoughtful reply. I will try to do so sometime over the weekend. The fact that you have asked a serious question deserves a serious reply. In the meantime I am quite amused to note how the attacks, condemnation, and a general "blame the victim" attitude continues. It's really quite funny to me! Why just a few minutes ago I even got classified into a political ideology! LOL Contrary to what the opinion of me appears to be in the replies, I have a really eclectic sense of humor myself, as do most software types like all of us here. When stuck at an airport because flights have been cancelled do to severe weather right outside the window, I even move close to the ticket agent because I enjoy the entertainment of watching people attacking him/her and in the process generally making fools out of themselves. I'm NOT saying that is happening here, but I do find it all humorous. I have, however, really appreciated the serious responses, few that there have been, from people that seem to understand what I am talking about. And I have even picked up some useful information on my original question about Crystal Reports. I've managed to avoid CR for decades now, and hope to present management with enough info to continue to do so, so I was able to report on today's scrum call that most responses have been "don't use it!". Will post again soon. Brad

First of all, I love the code fragment! LOL Oh, I'm not taking any of this personally. Just trying to help promote professionalism in this industry. A number of the responses have indicated that I should lighten up and not take things personally, and to view it from the viewpoint of those that are regular contributors to The Lounge. This is sort of like a restaurant owner suggesting to a first time patron that he should have not expected good professional service from the wait staff because if the person knew them, he would understand. A completely true statement, but one that is likely to ensure that the first visit to the restaurant is the last visit. Forums like The Lounge are very much professional forums and should be treated as such. And the words you say in these forums has a VERY long life, and CAN come back to bite you! This is exactly why I very seldom let someone I know from my business world be a friend on Facebook, where I let down my hair. And I never let my personal jokes, wise cracks, etc. show up on linkedin.com, so as not to tarnish my professional appearance.

Thank you Pete for the nice reply. I definitely DID make a mistake by not reading those rules first. But I've been amazed at the responses here, so much so that I just started another post in The Lounge that discusses the elitism and cronyism that obviously exists on this board. It is really sad that such a great online resource is being tarnished in this way by the unprofessional-ism I've witnessed today. Frankly, while I do get a lot of good information from this site, I have noticed that the bulk of the projects on this site are actually written by very low time, inexperienced people, and many times from other countries. I really appreciate the hard work that they do, and even with my long experience in this field, I find their work very useful. And I am impressed with how these young members in our profession are volunteering their time as a way of furthering their own careers, just as young attorneys often do pro-bono work to build their fledgling law practices. Cudo's to them all! I just hope by this dialog, and the dialog that I hope will be generated in my "First Experiences With The Lounge" thread will be taken to heart by others in such a way that it will improve their professional skills and lead to further success in their careers and lives. Thanks again, Pete!

Another GREAT example of the unprofessionalism, elitism, and cronyism I am referring to in this post.

I have come to www.codeproject.com for years and find it is a very valuable resource for my work. But until today, I have never that I recall posted anything to "The Lounge". Seeing "The Lounge" and thinking it was a place that may be monitored by a large group of _professional_ software developers, I asked a question. Unfortunately, I did NOT take the time to go read all of the rules associated with The Lounge. In retrospect, that was a mistake. Within seconds of posting my question, I was shocked to receive numerous responses. And all but one were condescending, elitist, and showed a complete lack of any sort of professional conduct or courtesy. In particular, one responder was completely over the top in his unprofessional and attacking response where he accused me of not being able to read, and called my software architecture, of which he knows NOTHING, a crock. Others told me to go read the rules, and even pointed out the rules that I broke. Turns out I DID break rule # 2, but all of these other "professionals" broke rule #1, which states that those commenting in The Lounge should be "respectful". What the unnamed "mugger" in The Lounge and the others SHOULD have done is to simply say "Your question is not appropriate according to the rules of this forum (provide link to rule). You should re-post your question in one of the programming forums where such questions are welcomed.". If that is too much to type, and you see this a lot, then I suggest you just save that text into a text file somewhere so you can cut and paste in a standard, PROFESSIONAL response when people like myself make a mistake. As a software professional that has earned a very good living in this field for over 35 years and frankly has very little time to contribute my experience to forums like this due to the backlog of new development projects in my queue, I do feel some sense of responsibility of contributing back to the software development community as a whole. So I will simply close by saying "Cool your jets folks!"

Thank you for the nice response, your advice is duly noted!

Thank you Nagy for that very hostile, condescending comment. Jerk!

I would like to write a utility class that will let me execute a Crystal Report inside any .Net application and produce a PDF file. As this is a utility class, I would like for it to be completely independent of the actual type of .Net program, i.e. it should work the same way in a console application, a windows service, an ASP.Net web application, a Windows Forms application, etc. I am a newbie to Crystal Reports, and everything I have found so far on using CR in .Net is always tied to some specific type of .Net application, typically either an ASP.Net or a Windows Forms application. Also, my applications are very low volume applications, so I hope that I do not have to deal with all of the large volume, super scalable CR infrastructure installations like RAS. Any pointers or references to useful things on the web would be most welcome! Thanks, Brad