I agree with Ken. When I went to university the 2nd half of 1st year we were taught assembler. I have found it invaluable to know what the machine is actually doing. I came up through C, C++ and have landed in C# (and java when I have to) and I know pointers although I have never been able to sucessfully explain them to those people who couldn't figure it out themselves. All .NET languages use pointers (those "ref" types and arguments), it's just that the compilers give you a prettier view of them. But when things start crapping out, sometimes you really gotta know. The other thing that university (any program, not just CompSci) teaches you is critical thinking and perseverance (ya gotta pass Stats even when you know you'll never use it). Perseverance proves that even if you're assigned a task which you totally disagree with, you'll still do it. It also teaches you how to properly learn. My cousin's husband (who is a university prof) always said, it you want a doctor, make him an engineer first, then he'll know how to learn. (He may be a bit biased) Gary Dryden One parting shot, how often do you go to a self-taught doctor?

Lets do a survey. I am betting that if you have a college/university education in Comp Sci, VB is not your language of choice. Let the flame wars begin! My first language was algol (so that tells you how long I've been programming)

I have been on both ends of RentACoder, both purchaser and seller. Most of the programmers on RentACoder are in eastern Europe and India. Make sure you are dealing with an individual not a company. On many of my bids, the responses from companies indicate that they have hardly read the requirements. They will low-ball the price then find ways to raise it after you have committed. Stick with individuals as they don't play that game. Also, don't put out a request for some huge project. You need to slice it up into pieces. You need to be the master architect and carve the job up into pieces that can be done in 5 days or less. If you can't architect it yourself, then don't go there. As to quality, it ranges. If you want something as esoteric as J2ME (Java for cell phones), I have found that anyone who will respond will be really good. If you want an ASPX application, I would be quite leary, unless you are in total control of the architecture. I once worked on a project where the owner of the project knew nothing about programming and jobbed the whole thing out to an Indian company because they were cheap. I had to come in at the end to try to clean up the mess. It was a TicketMaster type application and they were keeping the current order as an ADO table in a session variable!!! Needless to say, the project failed. If you are a North American programmer looking to RentACoder for work, you really only have 2 advantages: you comprehend english very well and you are available during the North American business day. So don't even bother with most of the jobs because you'll only be able make $10-$15 an hour.