At certain number of items the first one starts being faster because it's the same code from the cache repeated while the second one needs to load code to cache as it progresses. Better coding - for number of loops >=3 is example #1 and for number of loops < 3 is example 2. Roman Ziak www.dipmicro.com

Here in Canada intern wages are so low that employers rarely care about their results and use internships as a cheap way to pick cherries. The fact that you are on the market after your 3 year internship shows that your former employer was not interested enough to extend a serious offer to you. The best programmer at my place started there right after graduation and never was on the job market. I myself started for 40k (CAD) in 1999 and my salary went up almost 20% the very first year. It's understandable that employers should have the right to "test drive" before they commit serious money into you. I don't know Chicago area, but IMHO $40-$45k starter salary does not sound ridiculous at all. $55-%65k after 10 years seems little low, but in order to get to those magnitutes you need to perform well and stay at one place. If you will be jumping around for more money, you will miss on the salary ranges and job offers that never make it to the job market. If you don't like what they are offering you, start your own company and make your own salary without splitting it with army of other office peons spending half their time chatting at the water coolers and cofeee makers. Your own company would be probably the best job out there that you can find.

malwarec0d3r wrote:

I ask a serious question, and all i get is flames and insults. Cant you just answer a simple question without hurting the askers feelings?

It's not that bad here. Try comp.lang.c or even worse comp.lang.c++ full of self-absorbed arrogant nerds and then you'll see what flaming means :) Well, I am being unfair ... there are few good men there. Updated: I do not know what the OP was asking before, maybe he was just trolling and that's why got flamed. Roman

As someone already told you it may be good idea to learn the other side so you can at least identify pros and cons on both sides. For starters PHP is C ripoff very easy to learn and understand and that's probably why it became so popular. It has functions for almost anything. But it has a mess libraries with no consistency, there may be 3 functions doing same or similar things. Someone criticized that PHP needs some 2000 functions for what Perl can do the same with well designed library of 300. Google on how many problems people have with "magic quotes". Secondly PHP is fairly slow. There is a comparison available between c# and PHP here: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/csharp.php That's actually comparison for Mono C#, which last time I checked did not stand-up to MS C# benchmark-wise. The ASP.NET server will be way more responsive than PHP one. In my opinion Visual Studio is superior editor and debugger to any PHP editor/debugger (if you'll be learning PHP and like your VS, try out the VS.PHP) IMO PHP is more suitable for quick hacking and prototyping, but .NET is more suitable for writing robust long-term easily maintainable web apps. Cannot give you comparison of MySQL and MSSQL because never had to do anything with the latter. Cheers Roman